


i fell from the sky (and then i fell for you)

by casco



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Clexa, F/F, Fix it AU, Gay Panic, Ice Nation - Freeform, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:55:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28218060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casco/pseuds/casco
Summary: A fix-it AU divergent from season 2 ep. 16 in which Clarke is not captured and brought to the commander but rather captured and brought to the Ice Nation....but not to be executed.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin & Lexa, Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 82
Kudos: 164





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is somewhat of a teaser for a story that I have been thinking about and that has been pounding at my brain to be put into writing for quite some time. I swore to myself that I would not post any more fics until I completed all of my WIP and that I no longer would post any stories until they were at least 75% complete. However, I've found that encouragement, engagement, and support from readers really motivates me to write and to write better. 
> 
> As such, if you all who take the time to read this could provide feedback (criticism? typos? ideas? anything!), it would be much appreciated. I unfortunately cannot promise when the next installment of this will be; but I'm hoping soon. But I WILL promise that for this chapter I will be responding to every comment. I'd love to interract with you all and I really want this to be a grand story. I am envisioning approximately 8-10 chapters for this but time will tell.

When Clarke first left Arkadia, after felling the Mountain, after pulling the lever and killing hundreds (thousands? She’s not sure) of people, innocent or not, she didn’t have a true plan. The plan, in its entirety, was to  _ run away. _ From what, exactly, Clarke couldn’t quite put her finger on. Because, logically, she knows she can’t run away from  _ herself _ . And what else does she have to run from, now? Her people are safe. The mountain men are gone. And the grounders...well, she can only imagine they will be preoccupied healing those rescued from the mountain and trying to figure out what to do with themselves in the absence of the  _ maunon _ after generations of their lives being ruled by fear of them. And her people? They are still scattered, broken, fragmented...but they are safe, and she knows Bellamy and Kane and her mother can handle keeping them that way. 

So, there’s nothing for Clarke to run from, but somehow she knows she must run, despite this. Standing among her people, seeing their smiling faces, only makes the crushing weight on her shoulders press down that much harder. The absence of their grief and the abundance of the joy as they reunite, as they discover the ground untainted by the fear and turmoil she has experienced in the past weeks, makes her feel like a physical weight is clamping down on her chest. She can’t breathe.  _ I bear it so they don’t have to. _

And so before she even spends a night in the Ark after the battle at the mountain, she is running. Into the trees, where it feels like she can at least take shallow breaths. It isn’t much better, really. But in a world where Clarke can’t look at  _ anyone _ (not even herself) without feelings of despair and desperation and anger and rage, without feeling like a knife is twisting into her heart, the solitude does grant her some peace.  _ I bear it so they don’t have to. _

Some. 

It doesn't take many hours of wandering for Clarke to realize she’s lost. That was the point though, wasn’t it? She didn’t leave with intentions to keep her bearings, to hang around close enough that she could find her way back to the Ark. She intentionally walked in the opposite direction of the nearby Woods Clan. Now, she finds herself surrounded by trees that shoot up towards the sky, making her feel very small in comparison. The ground beneath her feet is soft, full of fallen needles from the trees around her, and it makes for an eerily quiet trek through the woods. While she’s acutely aware that she could be being watched; that she most likely is being watched, if she knows  _ the Commander _ at all; her hand does not rest on the gun at her hip, nor do her eyes scan her surroundings. Her ears do not strain to listen. 

Clarke simply walks. And walks. And walks. The hours turn to days and she loses track of time almost completely. Her feet ache and directly behind her eyes, her brain is throbbing painfully, until the sun dips down below the horizon and the moon takes its post in the sky and then comes up again in the morning, starting everything over again. Clarke remembers a time when she used to revel at the idea of watching the sun rise and set from the ground, of seeing the moon from below it rather than above. She thinks, for a second, that she would give anything to be back in the sky, to be ignorant to this earth and the people on it and the destruction it all has brought to her. The destruction she has brought to it. But she realizes almost as quickly that she doesn’t wish she was back in the sky; Clarke just wishes she was nowhere at all. 

And that’s where she is heading as she walks. It isn’t easy going, navigating a thick and unfamiliar forest. Especially not when she hasn’t slept more than a few hours here and there in days, and has only managed to snare a single rabbit, only identified a handful of berries that were safe to eat, and has only been able to drink when she crosses a stream or a puddle that doesn’t look too insidious. 

Clarke notices, after many days of walking, that the forest is slowly changing. She wonders how much ground she might have covered since she left the Ark. She remembers learning from Pike that the average person can cover 12-15 miles a day walking at a moderate pace and resting at night. Her pace has been slow, lazy, and her direction has hardly been in a straight line. Whenever she notices she is nearing a village, whenever she detects signs of life in the forest, she deviates her path away. It’s a marvel, really, that she hasn’t just gone in a giant circle. Actually, she isn’t sure that  _ isn’t _ what she’s doing; but she’s doing her best to track the sun and keep her bearings. But alas, there are spans of hours where she is too mindless to remember to check her route. 

She’ll estimate, with no way to ever know if she is right and nothing to really base it on, that she has probably covered somewhere around 40 miles if it was stretched out in a straight line. Then she thinks of all of the times she has stopped to heave the contents of her stomach onto the forest floor, the times she has stumbled and simply lay there, the whole world spinning, on the cold forest floor, and she thinks that perhaps it’s more like 30. Pitiful, really. A trained warrior would have covered easily double that. 

Wanheda would have covered triple. 

But Clarke doesn’t feel like Wanheda, now. The only thing connecting her to Wanheda are the visions she sees behind her eyelids whenever she closes them, the voices of those she left dead in the mountain haunting her every thought. Children with their eyes melted out of their skulls, elderly with charred black faces and bloody bodies. 

There is a distinct line between  _ Clarke _ and  _ Wanheda _ , and somehow, she feels like she is neither. She is nothing other than the weight of the destruction and damage she has caused.  _ We bear it so our people don’t have to.  _

Anyway, the forest is changing. The trees are looking skinnier, shorter, and further apart, and there is snow on the ground. She no longer has to weave her way through them, but rather can pick out a wide path in the moonlight which is now able to infiltrate down through the thinning branches. It’s cold, too, her breath now visible in front of her with each exhalation. That’s troubling, because she is not dressed for the cold. She wears a thin denim jacket, a black long sleeve shirt, cargo pants, and boots. Not exactly the warmest get up. She also left with no supplies, nothing to start a fire, and the earth is damp from recent rain, so it’s unlikely she will be able to get a fire going. She doesn’t plan on stopping, anyway. Not until her body literally gives out underneath her. She doesn’t dare lay down and close her eyes before so, knowing her mind will only torment her if she does. 

Clarke’s body does, one day, give out. She makes it an impressively long time, given the circumstances. Her heels and toes are bloodied and blistered, her clothes are tattered nearly to shreds, and she hasn’t been able to feel her fingers or lips or ear tips for days due to the cold. The trees are now more like saplings than trees, and many of them have white bark rather than brown.  _ Birch trees _ , she remembers. She had always liked pictures of those in books, had always thought of them fondly when mentioned in poetry she would read. She is trying to recall the words of a poem she once memorized, in a book whose pages she had nearly worn see-through, dog-eared so badly her mother had to buy it from the library on the Ark. And books were no cheap commodity in space. 

As her legs begin to tremble, her toes catching in the now frozen earth beneath her feet, her teeth clattering together from the cold, Clarke has this nagging inclination that she is going to freeze to death, out here, alone, in the middle of nowhere. She is broken to the point that she thinks that sounds nice, peaceful. A good way to go. At that moment, she thinks maybe she  _ is _ Wanheda, afterall; she does not fear death. She embraces it, welcomes it. She can feel it settling over her like a heavy wool blanket as she slides to the ground, back against a birch tree. She reaches out with numb fingers and touches the rough bark, her memory finally coming back to her as she envisions the poem beneath fluttering eyelids.  _ Robert Frost _ . The irony of the author’s last name is not lost on her as she sits, shivering. She closes her eyes, resting her head against the tree, and is only part-way through murmuring the poem to no one but herself and the wind when she slips away. 

_ “When I see birches bend to left and right _

_ Across the lines of straighter darker trees, _

_ I like to think some boy's been swinging them. _

_ But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay _

_ As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them _

_ Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning _

_ After a rain. They click upon themselves _

_ As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored _

_ As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. _

_ Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells _

_ Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— _

_ Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away _

_ You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. _

_ They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, _

_ And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed _

_ So low for long, they never right themselves….” _

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

“Get up,  _ Wanheda.” _

Clarke has been lost in a deep, deep darkness for...she doesn’t know how long. When her consciousness stirs at a voice that sounds very far away, she isn’t sure if she is alive or dead. She does her best to burrow back into whatever mindless abyss she had fallen into, too tired to fight anymore. 

“I said, get  _ up _ ,” the voice snarls, and to her dismay, it sounds louder now. She almost can’t deny that she is alive, that she is being brought back to consciousness. “I didn’t track your winding, aimless trail for the last day for you to die now.”

_ Is that what I’m doing? Dying? _ She wonders. Then there is a sharp cracking pain to her side as someone very rudely kicks her in the ribs with a heavy boot. 

“Unf,” Clarke complains, and she realizes then that she is awake. 

Damn.

“There she is,” the gruff voice says, and Clarke finally opens her eyes. The first thing she sees is fire, and suddenly she becomes aware of the smell of smoke as well. Reflexively she lurches towards it until she is very nearly in the flames herself, her skin burning painfully but wonderfully. She can see that her fingertips are black and knows that isn’t good, but for the moment, she doesn’t care. 

Once the initial thrill of warmth after prolonged coldness is over, Clarke takes a breath. She does a quick inventory of the areas of her body that will no doubt require medical attention; her finger tips are frostbitten and though she can’t see them, she’s certain her toes and ears are in no better condition. Frostbite is something she has seen on the Ark, in space, and she knows the outlook is grim if she can’t successfully revive the tissues. 

Next, she looks up. At the person who found her, and started the fire. While she is inclined to be thankful to them, she is also aware that they most likely aren’t just there to save her life and let her go on her merry way. 

The person - the man - is looking down at her thoughtfully, with a predatory-like smirk on his face. She notes the scars on his face and something tickles at her memory; Ice Nation.  _ Azgeda _ . “You’re Ice Nation,” she says, watching him warily as she pulls off her boots to bring her feet closer to the fire. She’s only seen a handful of Ice Nation warriors in person, but she knows the purposeful scarring on their faces is an identifying marker. 

He gives a short, rueful laugh that almost sounds more like a bark. “I guess you could call me that.” he says, shaking his head. He offers no further explanation. He pulls a pot from a pack that’s laying on the ground several feet away, packs it with snow, and then places it on the edge of the fire. “Warm yourself, drink, eat. Tomorrow, we get moving.”

Clarke stiffens. “There is no  _ we _ ,” she says. “I appreciate you finding me and building this fire. But I’ll continue on my own.”

The man laughs again, shaking his head as he swirls the melting snow around in the pot, adding more as it shrinks down. He seems totally unbothered and it makes Clarke bristle; however, Wanheda, or not, she knows she is weak and injured and in no condition to pick a fight. She might be willing to wander in a frozen wasteland until she simply succumbs to her fate, but she isn’t interested in being taken out by an Azgeda warrior. 

After all she has been through, she is the only one allowed to claim the life of  _ Wanheda _ . 

The man appraises her for a moment and then returns his attention to the water, which has come to a near boil at this point. He pours some of it into mugs that look to Clarke like tetanus vesicles, and then rummages through his pack again. She sees as he pulls out a sack of some type of grain and dumps a few handfuls into shallow bowls, also metal and rusted, and then pours the remaining boiling water into them. 

Clarke is acutely aware that the man has not responded to her previous statement, and she has an uneasy feeling in her stomach like they are playing a game of cat and mouse. She isn’t sure which one she is, at the moment. But she does know that she is weak, and tired, and although she is a good fighter, she likely would not win against this Ice Nation warrior in this condition. Her feet are in excruciating pain as the ice crystals that have formed within them begin to dislodge and dissolve; she isn’t sure she could even stand if she wanted to. Suddenly she remembers her gun, and her hand instinctively goes to her hip. 

Lands on an empty holster. 

“Ah, ah,” the man tsks, watching her from the other side of the fire. He doesn’t reveal whether or not he has or has disposed of the gun; he’s smart; but he obviously has done  _ something  _ with it. 

Clarke is the mouse, it seems. 

The man smirks and then grabs one of the mugs and a bowl, brings them over to her and sets them down in front of her. “Like I said, warm yourself, drink, eat,” he repeats. “We move at first light.” 

Clarke is quiet for a moment, glances at the food that looks like a grainy oatmeal and the warm water in front of her. She grabs the mug first, and downs its contents before packing it with more snow and leaning forward to set it by the fire to melt down and refill again. She is quiet but she is calculating, trying to figure out how to approach this situation. She decides, after a moment, that she needs more information in order to do so. 

“Who are you?” She asks finally. She isn’t sure the man will answer; he seems deceptively smart, perhaps smart enough to know better than giving her any information. And if he does, how can she know it’s true? Either way, she needs to at least try, and work with whatever she gets. “Where are we going?”

The man meets her eyes and holds them, and if he is searching for anything within them Clarke does her best not to show him anything. 

“I am Roan, Prince of Azgeda,” he says, narrowing his eyes as he watches for any reaction out of Clarke. She can’t help the minute widening of her eyes in her surprise; she has heard of the Ice Queen, but never that she has a son. “We are going to meet my mother.”

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Clarke is woken the next morning with a handful of snow to her face. She jolts upwards immediately; she hadn’t intended to actually fall asleep. She had laid down and closed her eyes, curled up on the ground that had been warmed by the fire, with plans to keep track of Roan for the night. Apparently her body had other ideas. 

She glares at Roan, who has already turned away, packing away the mugs and bowls and sleeping mats he had brought and then securing the pack onto his back. She’s willing to bide her time until she can figure out how to get away from him, but the disrespect makes her chest burn. 

She stands up, testing her newly-thawed feet. They are extremely painful, but she can manage. She’ll have to manage. She holds her hands in front of her and sees her fingertips are still black, but they are warm as blood pulses through them, so she can only hope for the best. 

Clarke has a decision to make, now. She has no idea how far they are from wherever the Ice Queen is waiting, but she knows that going with Roan is as good as a death sentence. Perhaps Nia and Roan don’t think Clarke knows what it means to have been tracked and hunted to be brought to her, but Clarke remembers Lexa’s story of Costia. As much as the idea of Lexa’s face opening a box with her head in it pleases Clarke…

After all she has been through, she is the only one allowed to claim the life of  _ Wanheda _ . 

Roan stomps out the fire and then begins to walk, gesturing for Clarke to follow. She hesitates but does. She knows she can’t outrun him; there’s no point in even trying. There may be even less point trying to overpower him, in her state, with no weapon, but she has to do  _ something _ . 

They walk for quite a while before Clarke makes her move. She walks slowly and with a limp; it isn’t feigned, her feet  _ do _ hurt, but it’s something she could conceal if she was trying. She isn’t trying, though. Roan seems like his only error may be that he is underestimating her, and she needs to play that to her full advantage. So she complies, and shows him how weak and broken she is, so when she attacks he hopefully won’t see it coming. 

But he does see it coming. 

Clarke is sure she’s silent as she creeps up on him; slowly and inconspicuously closing the distance between them as they walk, until she is now only several feet behind him. Then she makes her move, leaping forward with the bottoms of her feet aimed directly at the back of his knees, poised to topple him over and then get her hands around his neck before he can retaliate. She knows exactly the angle and exactly how much pressure to apply to snap his neck. 

It’s a good plan, but as soon as her feet connect with his legs Roan makes it clear he had been paying attention. Or, at the very least, that he has been trained to never let his guard down and to always be ready to defend himself at a second’s notice. He does stumble forward, falling with his arms out to catch him, but as soon as Clarke lands on his back he is rolling. His weight briefly crushes her as he rolls his entire body over hers, and before she can even fully process what is happening he has a blade pressed against her throat. She swallows and the edge nicks her skin, stinging. 

With his legs on either side of her he hovers over her, panting, teeth bared in an animalistic way. Clarke meets his eye, showing no fear. If anything, she is only angry. She waits for him to finish the job with a stony gaze. 

Then Roan smiles, and throws his head back, laughing, as he pulls the knife away and stands. “That’s more like it,” he says, sheathing his blade. He dusts off his clothes and holds out a hand to Clarke. “When I heard of the bounty on Wanheda’s head, I thought I was going to have more fun than this. I thought maybe you weren’t even her at all, at first. But it was all just a ploy,” he says, nodding his head almost as if in admiration. “Nice one.” 

Clarke disregards his outstretched hand, but then Roan’s face changes from playful to dark and he reaches down, grabs her roughly by the forearm and yanks her up. “You’ve done most of the walking on your own. We are nearly to the Ice Court. Don’t make me kill you now; I’d really like to get back in my mother’s good graces.”

Clarke is nearly shaking with a surge of emotions; angery, disappointment, fear; but she levels her chin at Roan. His eyes nearly gleam at the suggested challenge, but he calls her bluff. He pushes on one of her shoulders, spinning her around so he is behind her, and then shoves roughly between her shoulder blades. “Go, now. Straight. And stop with the limping. If we make good time we will be there by nightfall.”

Clarke takes a deep, defeated breath and starts walking, Roan following a safe distance behind her. Maybe she isn’t in charge of who gets to claim her life, afterall. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Clarke isn’t sure what she thought the Ice Court would be like, but it isn’t this. 

The building is short and stout on the outside, but the guards standing by the entryway make it clear that it is important. Or, that something - someone - important is inside. The guards all look shocked to see Roan there, now holding Clarke by the back of her jacket as he leads her up the several steps. “Let us through,” he says in a low, growling tone. They seem reluctant, but after they look back and forth between them, the ultimately secede.

The inside of the building is far less unassuming. They enter through an archway into a narrow hall that has doors hinting at more rooms on either side, and as they walk further down, Clarke notices windows on the right hand side that allow viewing into what looks like some kind of lunch hall. The few people inside seem to notice their presence and they nearly freeze in place. Clarke looks away, ahead of her, as Roan keeps steady pressure on her back to keep her moving. 

Clarke can see that they are heading toward another archway that looks as though it opens into a larger room. The stone floor beneath her feet has been polished to a glossy shine, and deep blue banners string the walls. When they enter, she nearly has to shield her eyes from the sunlight that floods in through the massive skylight windows in the roof. It’s due to this that she doesn’t see the Ice Queen before she hears her. 

“You dare to show your face here?” She says, her voice dripping with arrogance. 

“You asked for Wanheda, did you not?” Roan says, now leaving her side to step forward. She wonders what it means for her that Roan feels comfortable letting her loose, out of his sight. “Here she is.”

“So I see,” Nia says. She remains perched regally atop her throne, which is on a raised platform. The chair she sits in is, unnervingly, covered with bones. To Clarke’s trained eye, many of them appear to be human. “You’ve done well, son,” she says, but her eyes are solely on Clarke, who holds her eye contact with steel resolve. “Take him away, now,” she says, waving her hand dismissively towards the guards Clarke can feel looming behind them. 

“You promised,” Roan says. He doesn’t exactly struggle as the guards step forward and grab his shoulders, but he resists their pull. “Wanheda, in return for my allowance back into your court.”

“And you  _ will _ be allowed,” Nia snaps. “But not without being debriefed or having your loyalties tested.” Her eyes, which have strayed to her son for several seconds, snap back to Clarke. “I have business with Wanheda, now,” she says, and with that Roan allows himself to be dragged away. Clarke doesn’t look at him as he goes. 

Now alone, save for the presence of the guard at Nia’s side and those behind them, Nia relaxes her features a bit, even smiles. “Wanheda,” she says, as if in greeting, like Clarke has only just entered the room.

She waits a few seconds, perhaps expecting a greeting in return, but Clarke remains silent. “I know this must be unnerving for you. I apologize for having you brought here against your will. However, I know how the Commander speaks of me; I do not believe you would have come willingly. Am I right?”

She takes Clarke’s continued silence for an answer, and nods. “I thought as much.”

Nia goes quiet and pins Clarke under her calculating stare. Clarke’s skin begins to crawl beneath it and she feels a flash of annoyance that ultimately breaks her silence. “Why am I here, Nia? Will you have my head, too?” She doesn’t like not being able to anticipate Nia’s moves; she has only heard brief stories of her from years ago. She has nothing else to go on, no way to try to predict what her motives may be, what exactly her plan is. She can only assume that it begins with torturing her for information and ends with her head in a box at the end of Lexa’s bed, same as Costia. “Because if you think Lexa will care, you are wrong. She abandoned me - my people - at the mountain.”

Nia laughs, but somehow, even the whimsical sound sounds predatory as it escapes her lips. Clarke clenches her jaw and averts her eyes to the floor. She had been prepared to die out in the forest; but now, she feels self preservation swelling within her, and due to her previous nonchalance about the status of her life, she feels somehow behind in saving it now. Her fingernails dig into her palms as her mind races to get ahead of Nia, her eyes dart around the room to survey for any exits, any weapons, how many people are present. 

“Wanheda -  _ Clarke _ -” Nia corrects. “You have this all wrong; not that I can blame you,” she says with a sigh. “Lexa does paint me as quite the villain, doesn’t she? However, has she told you that she has not visited the Ice Nation once since her ascension? Has she told you that she has allowed our people to be slaughtered should they stray from our lands? Has she told you that she has blocked all attempts for our people to trade with the other clans? Lexa is no leader, not  _ here _ . She does not understand our ways and that ignorance has led to fear, and that fear has led to her striking us down whenever and however possible.”

While most of Clarke’s dealings have been with the Woods Clan, she has met many members of other clans, seen them come together for the battle against the Mountain. However, she has only seen a few Ice Nation warriors or scouts in her time on the ground. It does seem odd; but Lexa had given her the idea that it was due to the Ice Nations treacherous tendencies, which seemed fair enough; especially after what they did to Costia. 

“And I’m supposed to just take your word for that?” Clarke asks. “That justifies what happened with Costia? It justifies not aiding the coalition against the battle of the Mountain?”

Nia looks at her like she is an opponent in a game that she loves playing; a game she thinks she will win. Clarke gets the feeling that she is somehow playing right into her hand. “Costia was a spy, and she murdered two of my men on Ice Nation territory. She was dealt with as any spy would have been, and her death was even more honorable in being used as a message to the Commander that such activities will not be tolerated.” Clarke would object to this - that’s definitely over the top - but she bites her tongue. “And as for the  _ maunon _ ,” Nia continues, “They are not a threat to my people. Our lands are too far and too hostile for them to venture out here, and our way of life is too nomadic for their air strikes to be effective. We haven’t had reapers here in over a year. Why would I volunteer my people to die in a war for the benefit of a coalition that does everything in its power to alienate us, to keep us weak? Especially against dangers that do not even affect us?”

She...she has Clarke, there. Clarke can, to her surprise, understand where she is coming from. However, she has no way of verifying any of this information, and she does not trust Nia. But what can she say to that? “Why join the coalition at all, then?”

Nia gives a slight nod and takes on a pleased grin, relaxing a bit back into her seat in a way that unnerves Clarke. She can tell that Nia’s explanation was meant to placate her, and Nia can tell that it worked. Was it all lies? Clarke doesn’t know. All she knows is that Lexa hates the Ice Nation and the Queen, and the Ice Nation seems far removed from the other clans. Both of their stories could be true. 

“My hand was forced,” she answers easily, as if it’s the most obvious thing. “Had I not joined the coalition, after Costia’s death was considered a direct act of defiance against Lexa,” Clarke is unnerved again by the casual way with which Nia says Lexa’s name rather than addressing her as the Commander; she has only observed the people closest to her wielding such a privilege; “she would have used that as reason to go to war with my people, as a threat to the coalition, to her vision of  _ peace _ .” Nia puts an emphasis on the word  _ peace _ and rolls her eyes. “And because she has effectively tied a hand behind our backs for all these years, and encouraged the other clans to see us as mindless and cruel barbarians, I did not think it was a war we could win. Our people are strong, my warriors are the finest, but against 11 other clans who have had the benefits of gentler climate and beneficial trade keeping them clothes and fed and strong? I could not take such a risk; it would have been exactly what Lexa wanted. To rid herself of the Ice Nation, once and for all. I don’t believe she would have offered us a place in the coalition had she thought I would accept, in the first place, but she underestimated my willingness to take a blow to my pride and bow before her in order to protect my people.” 

Again, Clarke finds herself seeing the sense in Nia’s words and without any way to logically disparage them. “But Lexa has only been the commander for, what, 3 or 4 years? I find it hard to believe, if Ice Nation was not at odds with the previous Commander, too, that she could tarnish your reputation so much in such a short time that the other clans would agree to wipe yours out.”

“Then you underestimate the power of the Commander,” Nia says. “I am not trying to say that I have previously been more involved with the other clans,” she continues. Clarke notices she is starting to sound like her patience is thinning, her voice more clipped, her eyes more piercing. “However, once Lexa began work to unify us in preparation for the coalition, she left us out of it. She did not help us with treaties or supplies or training. She did not visit our lands to become familiar with our people or see our struggles for herself to better understand them. She let her feelings for that spy girl and her death overshadow her responsibility as Commander to care for our clan as her own, and that is unacceptable.”

“But that doesn’t explai-” Clarke starts, but Nia raises a hand, interrupting her. 

“Clarke, enough of this. I know that you can see the logic behind my actions and I know that Lexa has already tried to taint both your and your people’s image of me to ensure you will be loyal to her and never question her ways. I understand that you are conflicted and arguing back and forth is not going to get us anywhere.”

Clarke does not shift under her narrowed gaze; instead she stands tall, clenching her teeth, anticipating that the talking part has ended and wondering what is going to come next. So she asks. “So what now? What do you want from me?” She asks. 

“Wanheda,” Nia says, and the shift to her new title does not escape Clarke; it must signify something. “I will not keep you here against your will. I simply ask that you take shelter here, and perhaps give our way of life a chance. I ask that you put aside what you have been told and opinions you may have formed and see for yourself.” Clarke furrows her eyebrows; that is certainly not where she thought this was going to go. “You’re wondering why,” Nia muses, and there is that predatory grin again. “Ontari,” Nia says, and the girl who has been sitting silently beside her rises. Clarke had almost forgotten she was even there. Now, the girl stands and pulls a blade from her belt. Clarke tenses, acutely aware of the fact that she has no way to defend herself, but Nia holds up a hand. Clarke watches as Ontari takes the blade and brings it to her own hand, drags it across the skin, and blood starts to drip to the floor as she squeezes her hand into a fist. 

Black blood. That gets Clarke’s attention. What the heck?

Nia can see the confusion on Clarke’s face and fills in the blanks...somewhat. “Ontari is a  _ natblida _ ,” Nia says, as if that means anything to Clarke. “That means she can carry the flame.  _ Natblidas _ are supposed to be sent to Polis for training before the next ascension. However, I’ve held mine back due to our strained relations with this Commander. I think you can understand why.” Clarke does understand. Her brain is working a mile a minute, and while she can understand Nia’s intentions, she also understands that this means Ontari could, potentially, become a Commander loyal solely to the Ice Nation. It’s not hard to understand the dangers behind that. 

Nia continues. “I would like you to take some time to get to know Ontari. She will show you around and help familiarize you with our ways, our people, our traditions. After some time, I would then ask you to consider the possibility of ruling beside us, one day. With both a natblida and Wanheda in my courts, Lexa will no longer be able to ignore me - my nation.” Nia and Ontari both watch her closely. “I can sense your hesitation. However, I think if you look back at how Lexa has treated you and  _ your _ people, you will find you are not so different from me and  _ my _ people. You left for a reason, Clarke, and I believe fate has brought you here for your true destiny.”

Her true destiny? To side with the Ice Nation and overthrow Lexa? There are far too many factors in play for her to even begin to pick apart the ramifications. However, Clarke also knows that she is too weak to leave the Ice Nation now; she would certainly freeze and/or starve to death with more than a few more days in the elements. And she knows that if she is going to stay here, she has to at least try to play the part as if she is considering Nia’s proposition. 

And honestly, she _ is  _ considering it. But she can’t make any decisions until she has more time to think about it. The best answer seems to stay here and see how things play out, at least for now. She can regroup later as needed, once she has eaten and rested and her fingers and toes have healed. She swallows. “I’ll need a healer,” Clarke says in response. 

Nia smiles widely. “Of course. Ontari, take her to our fisas immediately, show her the dinner hall, and then bring her to her temporary quarters.” Ontari nods, wiping her bloody palm off on a rag from her waistband, and steps down towards Clarke. “You’ve made a wise decision, Clarke kom Skaikru. You will find a strong ally in the Ice Nation. You will not regret it.”

Clarke nods stiffly, taking a deep breath as Ontari reaches her side and they turn to leave the room. As they walk past the guards, she half expects to receive a blade through her ribcage, and she gets an uneasy feeling in her stomach as Ontari leads the way towards the healers. 

She thinks there’s a very real possibility that she will, in fact, regret this. 

She thinks she already does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that was chapter 1! Thanks for all who took the time to read!
> 
> The poem is "Birches" by Robert Frost and I take no credit for that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been inspired/motivated by some music in my writing of this story. Of particular since my posting of the last chapter, I have been listening to Hold Me While You Wait by Lewis Capaldi and No Right To Love You by Rhy Lewis. I suspect these will be the theme songs of most of my writing for this story and you can probably understand why. They might make nice reading companions. I may release my spotify playlist I write to in upcoming chapters, if anyone would be interested.

_ “May we meet again.” _

Lexa hears herself say the words before she turns away from Clarke on the mountain, but it feels as if she is watching from outside her body. Her ability to slip an emotionless mask over her face is impeccable; she doubts Clarke can see anything through it at all. She is presenting herself as a cool, calm, and collected leader who just made a simple deal. Cut and dry. Her people are safe and that was her only responsibility. She warned Clarke that her emotions would get the best of her, one day, and now that day has come. 

Lexa won’t let Clarke see that her heart is stuttering in her chest, that she feels so nauseated at the prospect of leaving her stranded on the mountain that it’s taking everything in her not to heave her breakfast from earlier that day right onto the floor. She doesn’t let Clarke see her waver as she turns on a heel and signals for her waiting army to follow her, her newly reclaimed citizens in tow, as she severs all ties with the Skaikru. 

  
And all ties with Clarke. 

_ “What did you do?” _

_ “What you would have done.” _

That one, those words...those had nearly been enough to break the facade. Initially, Lexa had believed them. But when she stood in front of Clarke and said them, the Mountain Man by her side, she knew immediately that they were not true. Clarke wouldn’t have done this. Clarke would have found a different way; she wouldn’t have even considered siding with the enemy. Clarke would have been willing to lose some of her people, if it meant saving the majority. Clarke was willing to live and die by the alliance they had formed together, unified by hatred of the  _ maunon _ . 

Lexa wasn’t. Lexa couldn’t. Lexa didn’t. 

When it came down to it, it was just not something she could do; send her people into war when she was presented with a deal that would spare them all. It was a calculated risk; side with the mountain to ensure her people’s safe return, or take her chances and fight them and potentially not get them back at all? Potentially lose hundreds of warriors in the process? Now that the  _ maunon _ had the Sky People, they didn’t need hers anymore. She didn’t have to worry about the repercussions of leaving the  _ maunon _ alive; at least, she wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while. She wasn’t naive to the threat they could pose should they accomplish their mission of being able to live on the ground, but she learned long ago not to place too much weight on the future when there is a solution directly in front of her in the present. 

And the Skaikru weren’t part of her coalition. She couldn’t justify sacrificing her people for those who had not very long ago been at war with her own. 

The complexity of it all, the snap decisions she was forced to make in the midst of a raging battle, are enough to make her brain feel like it is about to implode. She’ll be left to turn the events of that night over and over in her mind for what feels like the rest of her life. 

Clarke’s face as she realized what she had done will certainly be enough to haunt her for the rest of her days. 

_ Skepticism is the highest duty, and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.  _ She remembers Titus’ teachings. But had Clarke’s faith in her been blind, or had she led her on? Was Lexa destined to betray Clarke in this way? Had she unknowingly been setting Clarke up for betrayal all along? 

A voice snaps her out of her thoughts, blissfully. 

“Heda.” She turns to see Indra approaching, torch in one hand, sword in the other. Lexa glances at her and nods, ensuring that she remains composed, inner turmoil momentarily compartmentalized as she remembers she is currently leading an army that has no idea why they have suddenly left the battlefield and turned around. Her warriors were ready to fight; many of them still wish to do so, deal or no deal with the  _ maunon _ . Indra voices as much. “I would never question your decisions, Heda. But my warriors are wondering why we are not fighting the maunon. Even though they have released our people, they feel it doesn’t account for all those we have lost at their hands.  _ Jus drein, jus daun _ .”

Lexa nods, having already anticipated this. “Ask your people if the lives of those we got back tonight were not worth giving up revenge, if only temporarily? Soon, the  _ maunon _ will be above ground, and the playing field will have been leveled. They will have their chance for justice.” If Indra has thought far enough ahead to realize that the  _ maunon _ will still have their weapons and still present a great threat above ground, she doesn’t voice it. Perhaps only Lexa is dealing with that repercussion of her deal, currently. Her warrior simply nods and falls back, walking a step or so behind Lexa, until the Commander beckons her forward again. 

“Assign two scouts to stay behind and observe the happenings between the Skaikru and the  _ maunon _ . Tell them not to interfere with anything; only to observe. One will report back to me tomorrow morning, the other will remain until I am satisfied there will be no retaliation from the Skaikru.” Lexa isn’t sure there will even be a Skaikru after tonight; the  _ maunon _ she had spoken with made it quite clear that their deal involved the return of her people and her agreement to not interfere with their harvesting of the rest of the Sky People. What exactly they meant by  _ harvesting _ , Lexa isn’t sure. She swallows as Clarke’s face flashes behind her eyelids. 

Polis is too far of a trek to make in the dead of night, especially with hundreds of weak and wounded clan members in tow, so they stop in TonDC to recuperate and spend the night. The village is one of the largest of the clans, but still not large enough to house all of her warriors, so Lexa orders that the weakest enter the village to be seen by the  _ fisas _ and the rest of them spread out on the outskirts of the village and settle down for the night. Tomorrow, the rest of the warriors will continue with her towards Polis and go their separate ways as needed to return to their homes. Tonight, they will rest and regather themselves. 

But not until Lexa says something to quell the nervous whispers spreading throughout the camp. She knows their retreat has made her people feel uneasy; it goes against everything they have trained for, everything they have been taught. Justice, in their minds, has not been served. She knows she need not address her entire army, but rather only specific people who will then be charged with spreading the information, so she gathers the leaders of the armies and several messengers and scouts to speak with. 

A warrior of the Rockline clan speaks before she has the chance to. “Heda, why did we leave the mountain? We were ready to fight. I feel we may not see such an opportunity again.”

Indra pushes through the crowd and into the clearing between the commander and her warriors, and turns to snarl at the warrior. “You dare question the Commander?” She says, voice dripping with venom. 

“Stand down, Indra,” Lexa says calmly, hands clasped together in front of her. Indra remains tense for several more seconds but then obeys. “Your questions are valid,” she continues, now addressing the crowd of 20 or so war generals and other miscellaneous clan members. “Our mission marching on the mountain was to reclaim those of our people imprisoned beneath it. Have we not done so? Would you have had me send you into war when our people were already being returned safely, with no blood shed?” She asks. Her green eyes dance over the faces of those before her, waiting for words of dissent. “Speak freely,” she says after several seconds of silence. 

“The maunon deserve to die for what they have done, Heda. We got our people back without having to fight; all the more reason we were poised to win a battle for justice, rather than recovery, after that.” Lexa recognizes the woman who speaks as a warrior from the Sangedakru, and she appraises her briefly. 

“Blood  _ will _ have blood,” Lexa assures her. “But I will not march my people into a battle that was over before it even started. The attempts to get into the mountain were failing, and I was able to rescue the prisoners inside. Now, we will bide our time and seek justice when there is a clear path to it.” Murmurs ripple through the crowd, some sounding approving, others not so much. Lexa doesn’t have to stand here and explain anything or defend herself; she is Commander and her people will do as they are told. But speaking with them and helping them understand will only make them more loyal to her and more trusting of her in the long run, so she grants them this. 

“And what of Skaikru? Were it not for them, we wouldn’t have gotten our prisoners back. And now we have left them to their fate at the mountain.” This time, a member of the Louwoda Kliron Kru. Those of the Shadow Valley are known for being a relatively peaceful people, and as such, this response does not much surprise Lexa. 

“The Skaikru is not a part of our coalition,” Lexa says. “They can strike their own deal with the  _ maunon _ if they please. My duty is to my people.” Lexa knows that there is much more to it than that, and she knows that her  _ people _ know as well, but what else can she say? Once she understands more about the fate of the Skaikru, she can develop a better plan regarding their interactions moving forward. For now, she can only wait. 

Again, her gaze skates over the warriors who stand before her. “We no longer have to fear the maunon,” Lexa tells them, “and we have reclaimed the remaining of our people. Now, we will spend time recuperating and regathering. You will hear from me in the coming months about how we will seek justice for the lives that have been lost. But we can consider this here tonight a battle that we have won; a battle that is part of a greater war. Jus drein, jus daun,” she says, and as her people begin to chant behind her,  _ jus drein, jus daun, jus drein, jus daun _ , she turns around and heads into her tent, effectively ending the meeting, and the group scatters. 

Inside her tent, Lexa peels off her layers of armor and leather and weapons until she is in only her underclothes, setting the rest of her garb down on the ground. She eyes her sleeping roll but she knows she will not be finding sleep tonight. The events of the past several hours play over and over in her head as she analyzes and reanalyzes every move she has made. As she tries to predict the future consequences of those moves, tries to mentally prepare for any situation that may arise. Because that is her duty as Commander.  _ I bear it so they don’t have to.  _

In the midst of her pacing and thinking Lexa continuously thinks of Clarke. The fearless sky girl who had somehow weaseled her way straight into being one of Lexa’s closest confidantes, the girl who had figured out (with the help of her friends) a way into the previously impenetrable mountain. The girl Lexa had grown to admire and even, if she were ever to admit it, love. 

But that’s over now. Lexa had made her choice; truly, she never had one. It always had to be her people, there was no other way. She had known that, and yet she had let herself fall for Clarke, anyway, allowed the girl to get close to her, and this is her punishment. She’ll have to live with this betrayal for the rest of her life.  _ I bear it so they don’t have to.  _

Lexa paces well into the night, well past when the rest of the village has fallen silent. She paces until the sun begins to rise and she can don her war clothes once more and leave her tent and lead the remaining warriors back towards Polis. She wears her war paint from the previous day still, but before she leaves the tent she wipes it off on her sleeve, sure that the silent tears that have been falling from her eyes must have worn tracks down to her skin. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

  
  


Lexa and her people have been walking for hours when the scout first reaches them. She had specifically instructed that she wanted an update come morning, so she is already annoyed when the young girl approaches and the sun is already making its descent back towards the horizon. Her guard holds the girl back, but Lexa beckons her forward. “Let her speak,” she says from atop her horse, not looking at the girl as she walks quickly to keep up with her. “Report,” she commands, her voice dull and flat. 

“Skaikru retreated from the mountain,” the girl tells her, and Lexa nods. She is relieved to hear they had been allowed to retreat, but that much was mostly expected. She knows the  _ maunon _ don’t have enough people able to walk the ground to face an army at their doors; it’s within where the danger lies. Which is why she kept her people out. “All except for their leader and one other.”

That catches Lexa’s attention. “Kane stayed behind?” She asks, finally glancing down at the girl. 

“Not Kane,” the girl corrects. “Clarke. And Octavia. They disappeared into a reaper tunnel and did not come back out. That is why I was late reporting to you; I was waiting to see if they would surface. However if I waited any longer I would not have been able to catch up.”

Lexa stiffens at this knowledge.  _ What is Clarke up to? _ “Give her your horse,” she says to the guard beside her. He obeys immediately, hopping down and handing over the reins. “Go back to the mountain. Send the other scout back to the Skaikru camp; you, watch for anyone who steps foot out of the mountain and report back to me immediately. Take 2 more scouts with horses with you. I want at least one person with eyes on both the mountain and the Skaikru camp at all times while the others relay information to me as needed.”

  
The girl swings effortlessly up onto her horse, nods, and then Lexa watches as she goes to her fellow scouts and they ride off together. Lexa knows all she can do is wait. She needs to go back to Polis, and then, combined with whatever information she gets from the scouts about both the mountain and Skaikru, she can develop a strategy to ensure the continued safety and survival of her people. 

The knowledge that she can do nothing does nothing to quell the turbulence within her, though. What reason could Clarke and Octavia have to go through the reaper tunnels, refusing to retreat with their people, beside trying to get into the mountain? To do so would be a suicide mission. Two people, without her sleeping army inside, and only unskilled and weakened Skaikru children within to aid them? They would never succeed. 

It sounds exactly like something Clarke would do, though. She should have known the sky girl would never simply capitulate. But it isn’t her problem. She shouldn’t be worrying about Clarke; she chose to abandon her on the mountain and in doing so she revoked any right she had to worry or care about her. 

Yet she still does, worry and care. Like she said on the mountain, it was a decision she made with her mind and not her heart. Had she listened to her heart...things would have gone differently. She would have kept her army at the mountain, she would not have taken any deals, and they would have gone to war together as planned, and Lexa would have fought at Clarke’s side, never letting her out of her sight.

But her mind had saved her people and that is her duty as Commander. She does not have the luxury of following her heart. Much the same as last night, Lexa finds herself plagued by her decisions and her throbbing heart as they make their journey back to Polis. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Lexa is sitting in the throne room, a full day having passed since the last report from her scouts, when news next reaches her. The same scout who reported back to her the first time enters the throne room, and upon the look on the young girl’s face upon entering the room - a mixture of both terror and awe - Lexa immediately sends her guard out and tells them to postpone her meeting with the ambassadors, leaving only Titus and herself in the room with the scout. “Report,” Lexa says coolly. 

“Skaikru felled the Mountain, Heda,” the scout informs, the words coming out in an almost unintelligible rush as she drops to one knee before the Commander in reverence. “Clarke and Octavia never emerged from the reaper tunnels. But then, hours later, suddenly the front doors opened and the sky people came out. Many of them. Children and adults, some of them on stretchers but most walking.”

Lexa, who had been tapping her fingers together impatiently, suddenly becomes still. She freezes as the scout informs her of the going ons since their retreat at the mountain. 

_ “Skaikru felled the mountain.”  _

“Trikru is calling Clarke  _ Wanheda _ ,” the scout adds. “I don’t believe the news has spread over all of the clans yet, but it is going around fast. All of the  _ maunon _ are dead, Heda. All of them!” The girl can’t contain the excitement that seeps into her voice. It’s unprofessional, but Lexa lets it slide. There are, clearly, much more pressing matters. Of all the scenarios she went over in her mind, Clarke taking down the mountain without any army was not one of them. The fact that her own people are now referring to her as  _ Wanheda _ does not bode well. There can be only one Commander, of both life and death, and the flame has chosen her. 

“And what has activity at their base camp looked like, since the return of their people? Is there any sign they plan to retaliate?” Lexa demands, her fingers now drumming on the wooden arms of her throne. 

“No, Heda. Mostly they just seem to be reuniting and...celebrating. They have the usual guards posted around their perimeters and have been hunting and gathering as normal,” the scout explains. “But Commander, you may want to know, Wanheda -  _ Clarke _ \- did not return with the rest of her people. She went only as far as the gates but then she turned around.”

Lexa, who had been staring off into a far corner of the room, contemplating, suddenly jerks her head back to meet eyes with the scout. “She went back to the mountain?” She asks, furrowing her brows. 

“No, Heda,” the girl says. “She just...left. One of my fellow scouts followed her for a bit, but she seemed to just be wandering aimlessly, for hours, so they came back. No one has seen her since. Her people are not looking for her, either. I witnessed her talking to that tall one...Bellamy?...right before she went into the woods. Retrospectively, given that she has not returned, it seems like she may have been saying goodbye.” The girl glances up at Lexa nervously. “But that’s just my guess, Heda.”

Lexa is silent for several breaths, thinking. “Tell me, what is your name?”

“Bretta,” the girl says, her voice now trembling slightly. 

“And Bretta, do you care to explain to me why no one followed Clarke to keep track of her movements? Did none of you think that the  _ Commander of Death _ deserves to be watched a little more closely directly after what she would only perceive as a direct betrayal by our people?” Lexa speaks through clenched teeth, the tendons of her neck visible as her entire body tenses. 

“H-heda, I am sorry,” Bretta says, bowing her head towards her knees. “I-I am only a novitiate. Based on your orders I thought we were only to observe the mountain and the Skaikru…”

“Clarke  _ is _ Skaikru!” Lexa yells, infuriated. Bretta flinches and Lexa groans, running a hand over her face. “This is what I get for not hand-selecting the scouts,” she mutters, mostly to herself, but also to Titus, who stands like a statue at her side. If she were not in such a sour mood, she might have apologized to Bretta; had Lexa known she was only a novitiate, she never would have assigned her such an important task. But she  _ is _ in a sour mood, and the apology never quite finds her lips. “Bretta, unless you have anything else to add, you are dismissed. You may stay on this assignment; however, please find Sylas and tell him he has been appointed lead scout. Give him the same orders I originally gave you; he will understand what I expect.” 

Being allowed to stay on the assignment after an oversight that allowed Wanheda to slip away from the watchful eye of the Commander is as close to an apology and pardon as the young scout will get. Judging by the way she nods graciously, bows, and then darts from the room, Bretta is well aware of this. 

Once the girl has left, Lexa allows herself to slouch slightly in her chair and she leans forward, holding her head in her hands, massaging her temples as she feels a migraine starting to settle in. 

“Heda, are you ill?” Comes Titus’ voice from beside her. He places a hand softly on her upper back in a show of support. While she is very comfortable in her fleimkepa’s presence - perhaps more so than anyone else’s - it’s still unlike her to slouch and groan and show outward signs of distress. 

“No, Titus,” she says, sighing heavily, but she doesn’t lift her head. “Speak freely. What do you think of all this?”

The man takes a few breaths before he answers, considering. “I think you have acted very wisely, Heda,” he starts, and he pulls his hand away from her upper back. Lexa is surprised to find herself yearning for the contact after it is withdrawn; it’s very rare she receives any sort of comfort. “Not only have you successfully gotten our people out of the mountain, something no Commander before has ever been capable of, but you pinned our two greatest enemies against one another and let them wipe each other out without spilling a single drop of our warriors’ blood. Skaikru still remains of course, however, they are a much less imposing threat than the  _ maunon. _ I feel they are more a thorn in our side than a true threat.”

Lexa nods her head ever so slightly, but still remains in her atypical position. She can see the merit in Titus’ words; but if they are true, why does she have a nagging feeling in her gut that something is wrong? That she’s missing something?

“Do you not feel the same, Heda?” Titus asks. 

“I...I feel like I am missing something I should not be missing. The spirits are...I feel as if they are trying to tell me something…” she murmurs. Again, this is unusual; it’s common for Lexa to be guided by the spirits - sometime without her even knowing that is what is happening - but she hardly ever voices the things that happen inside her head. If anyone can interpret this, though, it’s Titus. Despite the flame living within her, he still knows more about it than she does. 

Titus considers this. “The spirits of our past Commanders will guide you, Lexa. It is not up to you to doubt or question them. When it is time, they will advise you. Until then, it is simply your job to continue striving towards peace and safety for our people.” His answer does nothing to make Lexa feel any better, but she takes a deep breath and lifts her head, looking at Titus with tired eyes. 

That’s when Titus sees the heartbreak hidden within the depth of her green irises and understanding washes over him. “Heda, I think you need to rest. I know the past few days have been trying and you have not yet even returned to your chambers since arriving back at Polis. Go. There are no pressing matters and the ambassadors can wait until tomorrow to speak with you.”

Lexa, still feeling uneasy and still with a stabbing migraine, sighs and acquiesces, a true testament to how tired she really is. She rises from her throne and heads towards the door, straightening up as she approaches it, unwilling to look anything but strong and impassive in front of her charges. Titus follows behind her, and before she exits the room, she turns to him. 

“If there are any more reports from the scouts, wake me at once. I need to be informed at all times.” The fleimkepa nods and then Lexa turns down a hall, walking away from him, and he does not follow but rather goes to address the ambassadors. 

Lexa goes to her room and waves off the handmaidens at her door that offer to run her a hot bath, telling them they are done for the night and can go home. As much as she would love - and needs - a bath right now, all she can think about is stripping out of her council clothing and sinking into the plush furs of her bed and closing her eyes, and anything keeping her from doing that is dismissed quickly. 

Once in bed, though, Lexa finds sleep does not come easily as she had hoped it would. She lays awake, eyes closed but mind still very much active, and again the events of the last several days flash behind her eyelids over and over again. The last thing she sees before she falls asleep is Clarke, images conjured up purely by her imagination as she watches the girl wandering through the forest, alone, aimlessly, bloodied and injured and battered. She feels the weight that inevitably is bearing down on Wanheda after her victory at the mountain; a victory tainted by feelings of crushing guilt and responsibility; as if it is her own. It’s not hard for her to imagine because it is a weight she carries every day as well. 

_ I bear it so they don’t have to _ , she thinks just before sleep finally pulls her into blissful unconsciousness.  _ But I could not bear this for you _ . 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

“She  _ what _ ?” Lexa snaps at Sylas. 

It’s been 10 days since she sent Bretta and Sylas back to the mountain and the Skaikru camp, nearly 2 weeks since the halted war on the mountain. Clarke has been wandering the woods for nearly all of that time, followed at a far distance by Sylas himself. Until that is, as explained by Sylas…

“She entered Ice Nation territory, Heda,” Sylas repeats again, as if Lexa didn’t understand the first time. “I...I could not follow her past their borders. You know this. A Trikru scout on their lands would be assassinated immediately upon detection...”

Lexa is now standing, having risen from her seat atop her throne in the meeting hall, her fists clenched by her sides. Messages have been slowly trickling into her about the activities of the Skaikru, but nothing out of the ordinary has happened so far. Until news of Clarke entering the Ice Nation just reached her. 

“That is a risk you accepted by becoming a scout!” She nearly shouts. “If Clarke intends to deal with Nia, we need now more than ever to have eyes on her at all times.”

“I don’t think she crossed the border intentionally, Heda,” Sylas says. It’s a testament to his strength that he is still standing proudly under Lexa’s scrutinizing gaze. “She has been wandering aimlessly. She clearly does not know these lands, nor how to take care of herself alone in the wilderness. I’m surprised she has made it as far as she has. I don’t think she could have purposely been heading towards the Ice Nation.”

“We can’t know that,” Lexa responds coolly, though his words are mildly placating. “And now we  _ won’t  _ know that, because we’ve lost her.” Lexa, in that moment, isn’t sure whether her anger is over having lost track of Wanheda or lost track of  _ Clarke _ ; both have very different implications to her. 

Knowing there is nothing else he can say, Sylas bows his head. “Forgive me, Heda.”

Before Lexa can say anything else, Titus steps in. “Leave us, Sylas. Report back to your post.”

The scout nods and leaves, the heavy wooden doors opened and closed by the guards standing beside them. Titus waits a moment before speaking. “Heda,” he starts. “I know that we cannot anticipate what Clarke may be doing in the Ice Nation territory. I think it’s likely she entered by mistake, without intentions of being captured. But if Nia learns of her presence in her territory…” he trails off. 

Lexa’s heart is seizing in her chest as she is, momentarily, assaulted by visions of Costia. 

“I know,” Lexa grinds out through gritted teeth. There’s that pesky headache again. “Now that the Clans are calling her Wanheda, should Nia get her hands on her and kill her, she will be absorbing the power of the woman who slayed the mountain. It could be enough for her to finally make her move against the coalition.” And if Clarke ends up in Nia’s hands, suffers the same fate as Costia, because of her…. 

Titus nods, pleased that they have reached the same conclusion. Lexa’s next words, however, do not please him. 

“I need to seek a conference with Skaikru. Immediately. It will be quickest if I travel to them rather than sending a message and waiting for them to come here. We will leave this afternoon.” Lexa says. 

“Heda, I do not fully understand. Why spend further resources traveling to Skaikru? Why speak with Skaikru at all?”

“I need to determine whether or not Clarke had intentions to go to the Ice Nation all along. How do we know her  _ seemingly _ aimless wandering was not a ploy? I need to speak with them myself to ensure they are not planning to strike a deal with Nia that could threaten the coalition. And as for Clarke…” she trails off then. Then she clears her throat. “I think we are both now aware of the dangers of her falling into the hands of our enemy. She holds too much power to allow her to simply disappear into the forest, or allow Nia to have her way with her. I need her where I can keep an eye on her, at least until we have everything sorted out and we know where her allegiance lies.”

Titus looks dismayed, but he nods. “I will ride with you to the Skaikru, then.” He says, as if it’s a done deal. Lexa raises both of her eyebrows in surprise; Titus has not left Polis in years. It goes against  _ fleimkepa _ tradition to do so. He holds out a hand to stop her from speaking. “These are unprecedented times and thus I am taking unprecedented measures,” he states simply. Lexa merely nods; his presence, in all honesty, is the least of her concerns. 

“Guards,” she calls out, “Have the stable hands prepare 4 horses. Titus, Gustus, and Katya will be accompanying me.” Titus, her fleimkepa, Gustus, one of her most trusted warriors, and Katya, a skilled fisa who makes the only concoctions that have been able to keep her migraines at bay the past weeks. Arriving with any more people than that may send the wrong signal to the Skaikru, and she need not get started on the wrong foot. She already doubts her arrival will go over well. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Lexa was right. Upon coming within sight of the Skaikru’s camp around sunset the next day, bullets rip through the air. Warning shots, aimed a few feet above their heads and into the trunks of trees, but the message was clear.  _ You’re not welcome here _ .

“Stop!” A familiar voice shouts, and Lexa can make out Kane as he approaches the large gates, manned by several Skaikru guards. “Hold your fire.” She watches as he seems to argue with his men, and then they open the gate just wide enough for him to slip through. It  _ clangs _ shut loudly behind him. He holds up his hands to show they are empty as he approaches, stopping just close enough for them to be able to speak without shouting at one another, but still a safe distance away. Lexa can tell by the unruly growth of his facial hair and the dirt and blood smeared on his face that things have not been going well for him as of late. 

“What brings you here?” Kane asks warily, lowering his hands. 

“I wish to discuss a few pressing matters with you,” she tells him. “I have heard of your victory at the mountain; congratulations. But as you may have already discovered, that was simply a battle of a bigger war. There are other sleeping giants among us.”

“Commander,” Kane says, his tone cautious. “Our alliance was severed when you left us at the mountain. I don’t think I could get my people to have any further dealings with you…whatever we may face, we can face it on our own, as we did with the mountain.”

“That was not accomplished solely on your own,” Lexa retorts. “It is true that I chose to end our alliance and did not help you in securing the release of your own, I will not deny that. However, my people gave you valuable knowledge about the  _ maunon _ that helped you be able to penetrate their walls, and my people  _ did _ help fight from the inside and weaken their defenses. Clarke delivered the fatal blow, but it was more like a death by a thousand cuts.” Lexa knows that her words aren’t entirely true, and so does Kane. They both know that the Skaikru - that  _ Clarke _ \- very likely could have accomplished this all on her own. She is testing Kane to see if he will argue with her, to see if there is any hope of cooperation between Skaikru and her coalition, which would require him and his people to submit to her as Commander. 

His (albeit uncertain) silence speaks volumes. 

“So, I don’t understand. What exactly is it that you want?” Kane asks. 

“I’d like to speak with you, and anyone else you deem pertinent to the conversation, about how we will all proceed from here. There are things you don’t yet understand that I wish to discuss, some of which are more pressing than others,” Lexa says coolly. 

“You’re being cryptic,” Kane says matter of factly. “Is there a direct threat we should be aware of?”

“I don’t believe so, at this moment,” she answers. “But it’s my belief that there soon will be, and your people will need to choose a side. I’d like you to know the facts before that day comes.”

Kane is quiet for a moment, thinking. “I can allow you into our camp to speak with Counselor Griffin and me,” he says, “But you will need to leave your weapons outside the gate. My people don’t trust grounders anymore, as I’m sure you can understand.”

“Absolutely not,” Gustus exclaims from behind them, riding his large black horse so he is at Lexa’s side. “My Commander will not enter enemy territory unarmed, and neither will I.”

“Gustus,” Lexa chides, holding up a hand and giving him a stern look. “We accept.”

“Heda,” Titus chimes in from behind her. “This could very well be a trap. You’ll enter unarmed? It is not worth it. If they don’t want our help, leave them. We do not need them.”

“ _ A laik heda _ ,” Lexa hisses, growing very impatient with her chosen group of guards and their disobedience, whether they are trying to protect her or not. “You will all do as I say. Drop your weapons, now.”

Titus and Gustus reluctantly obey. As they ride towards the gates, following behind Kane who orders his guards to let them pass, barking that no one is to harm or intercept them, Lexa gets an uneasy feeling in her stomach. 

This very well could be a mistake. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

As they enter, Lexa listens as Kane instructs someone to go and get Counselor Griffin. She knows the woman is Clarke’s mother, as such, does not have high hopes their meeting will go smoothly. However, it’s something she must try. The Skaikru swell around them in a way that makes Lexa’s hand twitch towards her hip where normally a small blade would be tucked into her waistband, but she knows it would only come up empty. Although, she is  _ Heda _ , after all - there is still a small knife tucked into the ankle of her boot.

Despite their interest and the looks and murmurs of disdain at their presence, the people obey Kane’s order to allow them to pass into the metal structure that is the Ark. Lexa can’t help but marvel at the mass of it, which was floating in space only weeks ago; can’t help but realize that this is where Clarke grew up. 

That thought, she shoves away immediately. It has no place in her mind at a time like this. 

They wind through the narrow hallways bathed in artificial light and Lexa begins to feel a bit claustrophobic; the atmosphere is tense and she knows without looking over her shoulder that Gustus, Titus, and Katya are feeling the same way - tense, suffocated, anxious. Finally they reach their destination as Kane leads them through a doorway and into a room just large enough to fit them all, and motions for them to sit down at a black metal table that is bolted to the floor in the center of the room. Lexa hesitates at first, but then chooses a seat on the side of the table, so her back is neither to the back of the room nor the doorway.

She is happy she chose that vantage point because only seconds after she and her people have settled down at the table does Abigail Griffin come charging into the room. 

“Where is she?” The woman demands, charging right up to Lexa and slamming her hands down on the table beside her. Gustus lurches to his feet and had they been anywhere else, had Counselor Griffin been anyone else, her fight would have been over then and there. But instead of allowing Gustus to strike her down, Lexa holds up hand to him. He stands in a crouched position at her side, muscles coiled and ready to explode, but Lexa continues to hold her hand up, and the gesture is as good as a physical restraint. 

“Where is who?” Lexa responds. Her voice is monotonous, her face is impassive despite the annoyance flickering behind the surface. She does not blink as Abby stares at her, unwavering and unbothered by her display of anger. 

“ _ Clarke _ ,” Abby grits out through clenched teeth. “She disappeared after the mountain. She said she needed time alone, but I assumed she may have gone to speak with you after what you pulled at the mountain,” she says, with obvious contempt in her voice at the thought. “But now you’ve come back and she isn’t with you.  _ So where is she? _ ”

“Abby,” Kane steps in, moving around the table to place a hand on her shoulder and pull her out of Lexa’s face. She allows this, but never removes her eyes from the Commander. “This is not the point of this meeting. We can discuss Clarke at a different time.”

“She’s my  _ daughter _ , Kane!” Abby says, her voice loud as it reverberates through the small room. They hold each other’s gaze for several seconds, some sort of silent conversation occurring, and then Counselor Griffin takes a breath and straightens her spine, rolling her shoulders back as she composes herself. 

Lexa observes this quietly, and then decides she may as well address the matter in order to have the most productive conversation afterwards. “Your daughter has not been with me, nor my people, Counselor Griffin,” she says, causing Abby to spin back around to face her, her carefully composed facade almost immediately crumbling. “However, I have had scouts tracking her movements. That is part of the reason I am here.”

“Why would you have her tracked?” Abby asks, shaking her head. It’s clear that she’s not sure she believes what Lexa is telling her. 

_ Because the crushing guilt I feel for abandoning her has driven me to ensure she is at least safe in the aftermath of the damage I have caused.  _

_ Because I care about her.  _

_ Because I can’t stop seeing her face when she realizes I had betrayed her.  _

“When I heard she did not return with the rest of you, I needed to ensure she was not going to be a threat to my people, and as such, she needed to be watched.”

“She’s one girl!” Abby says, one of her hands flying wildly at her side haphazardly. “How could she be a threat to anything?” Lexa simply gives Abby a pointed look; they both know what Clarke is far more than  _ one girl _ . They both know what she is capable of. There’s no need to voice it. “If your people are tracking her, then tell us; where is she? We will bring her home.”

Lexa believes that Counselor Griffin is being honest; they really don’t know where Clarke is. They don’t know that she is in the Ice nation, which means, at the very least, if Clarke is trying to strike a deal with them, it is not with the backing of the Skaikru. At least, not yet. “As I said, this is part of the reason I’m here. Clarke has entered Ice Nation territory; we are unsure if it was accidental or done purposely. My scouts did not follow her after crossing the border. What do you know of the Ice Nation?”

Kane and Counselor Griffin exchange a look between each other that clearly reads  _ have you heard of the Ice Nation? _ and Lexa nods to herself before continuing without allowing them time to answer. “In brief, the Ice Nation are part of my coalition, but they are very separate from the rest of our clans. Their lands are too far and too hostile for the rest of the clans to travel to, and they do not participate in trade. They are ruled by a queen who undermines my authority and rules with an iron fist. I have allowed them to exist in this way as they have never openly retaliated against me or the coalition,” Lexa can’t help but clench her eyes shut as she thinks of Costia, but that was  _ before _ the coalition, and timed perfectly so that had she retaliated, the start of the coalition would have been in jeopardy. “However, it’s my concern that should Wanheda -  _ Clarke _ \- fall into the hands of the Ice Queen, she may try and use this as leverage to finally wage war against the coalition. Especially now that the  _ maunon _ are dead and the dynamics of our Earth have changed in ways we cannot yet anticipate as a result. I know your people have every right to not trust me or my people now, but do listen when I tell you that if you think  _ I  _ am a cruel and unjust leader, it is only because you have never met Nia.”

“It is true,” Titus speaks up from her side, surprising Lexa. “The Commander is the first of her kind to unite all 12 clans with a vision of peace. I have been the closest advisor of the past 4 Commanders; had you fallen to earth under anyone else’s reign, you would no longer exist.”

“So if Clarke is in danger there, and you believe Nia may try to use her as a pawn, why did your scouts not follow her? Why was she allowed into the Ice Nation?” Kane questions. 

“Nia allows her warriors to kill other clans’ members should they be found in her lands unannounced. I could not ask my scouts to walk into their deaths over a member of Skaikru who I am not bound to protect. Had I known that’s where she was heading, I would have given orders to collect her before she had the chance to do so; but word reached me too late.”

“If they are part of the coalition, though, why are they allowed to kill members of other clans? Doesn’t that go against the whole point of a coalition?” Kane presses. 

“It isn’t _ allowed _ ,” Lexa clarifies. “But it happens. Someone will stray into the Ice Nation, whether on purpose or by accident, and they will either be found dead or go missing. When questioned, Nia denies any involvement, and her people will not answer to me as long as she still rules over them. The times that I do receive concrete evidence of her actions,” again, Costia’s face flashed behind her eyelids, and she swallows, “They are accused of being spies, or scouts purposely entering the territory without permission, and she will make up some reason that validates their execution. I cannot start a war against the Ice Nation without evidence that holds up against them, and the Queen is careful.”

“Why allow them to join the coalition at all, then?” Kane continues, and Lexa feels a splitting pain erupt right in the center of her forehead, migraine setting in full force. She raises a hand and rubs at her temple with slender fingers. 

“If you wish to learn of the intricacies of relations among my clans and their people, it can be arranged. But that will take time, and we do not necessarily have a lot of time right now. I need an answer from you about how you will side should the Ice Nation feel like starting a war.”

“Why do you believe the Ice Nation is about to start a war?” It’s Abby this time, and although the continued questions rather than answers makes Lexa’s head throb, she’s pleased to listen to someone other than Kane. She makes eye contact with the older woman, who stands at the other side of the table with her arms folded across her chest. 

“Because of your daughter,” Lexa says, and she continues speaking before Abby or Kane can interrupt with a question. “In slaying the mountain men and becoming known as Wanheda - Commander of Death - she has taken on a position of much power in the eyes of my people. My people have their beliefs, and one of them is that killing someone transfers their power to you. This makes Wanheda particularly valuable, especially to a Queen who seeks to undermine my position as Commander and potentially try to take over my rule. If Nia strikes down Wanheda, even those loyal to me will no doubt think twice about siding against her. These beliefs run very deep and I have no doubt Nia will capitalize on this if possible. And now that Clarke was seen entering the Ice Nation….” she trails off. 

Abby pales considerably and leans back away from the table as she listens to Lexa speak. Kane shoots her a concerned look but remains seated, the gears in his mind turning almost audibly as they all consider what Lexa has just said. 

“You think that the Ice Nation would approach us seeking alliance in a battle against the rest of the clans after killing Clarke?” Abby finally says after a moment, as if the thought is ludicrous. 

“She very well could,” Lexa says simply. “Whether it be under the guise of feigned comradery fabricated by my betrayal at the mountain, or with the threat of your people being wiped first among the clans, I believe she will approach you and a choice will need to be made.”

“Commander, we can’t make a decision of such magnitude without hearing all-” Kane starts, but Abby slams her hand down on the table. 

“Bring us Clarke. Return her to us safely and we will strike whatever deal you want,” she says. 

Kane’s eyes fly wide open but Abby moves over to him, stooping to murmur in his ear until Lexa watches his expression change as he resigns himself to whatever Abby has decided for them both. She wonders who is truly the leader of the Skaikur, but that is a topic for a different day. 

Kane speaks. “If you can return Clarke to us safely, we will take it as a gesture of good will that will allow us to more openly negotiate another alliance with you,” Kane says. “It will show to our people that you are trying to make amends for what happened on the mountain, and Clarke understands your ways better than any of us; her guidance will be invaluable.”

Lexa is silent for a beat. “And if she is already dead?”

The muscles of Abby’s jaw clench and she speaks through gritted teeth. “Then we will take our chances.”

Take their chances with what? Attempted neutrality? Nia? Lexa could ask them many things, could try and chip away at their terms, explain to them that she would need to gather an army to try and locate Clarke and such things take time and could be seen themselves as an act of war by Nia. 

The solution comes to her quickly, though, no doubt guided by the spirits in her head at the way it just suddenly plops into her consciousness. 

She’s going to the Ice Nation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skepticism is the highest duty, and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.   
> -Quote by thomas huxley


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken some liberty making up words/phrases in Trigedasleng, even though it's not the dialect that would have been spoken by Azgeda. Check the notes at the end if you're curious about interpretations.

_ ….if you look back at how Lexa has treated you and your people, you will find you are not so different from me and my people. _

The words are still whirling around Clarke’s mind as she follows Ontari out of the main building and back into the frigid cold. The girl, who walks too stiffly and smiles too widely to be considered genuinely friendly and pleased with her task of baby sitting Clarke, looks over her shoulder to ensure she is following. She is, but she’s slow, her feet numb save for her toes that are now burning like they are on fire, hands stuffed into her pockets as if the thin material will save them from further damage from the biting wind. Clarke had seen snow in pictures, read about it in books, and even dreamed about one day catching a snowflake on her tongue; but the reality of it, she now realizes, is much less picturesque and ideal.

Ontari is dressed appropriately and doesn’t seem phased at all as sharp ice and snow whips at the side of her face, her dark hair blowing around in the wind. She waits for Clarke, always making sure she is never more than a few feet ahead, for which Clarke is grateful, because she can hardly see a thing. There are posts with sconces here and there, meant to light the way, but the wind blows on the flames so harshly that they are reduced to half their normal size, meaning the orange glow they cast only extends a few feet past the pole they are on. Between the darkness and the snow squall Clarke can hardly see her own two feet, and when she tries to lift her head to look around, the cold and wind sting her eyes, making them water and forcing her to look back down. 

It dawns on her that had she been outside another night in this, she wouldn’t have made it. 

Clarke doesn’t realize Ontari has stopped until she’s walking into her. The girl huffs at first, like a reflex, but then laughs quietly as she grabs Clarke by the shoulders and ushers her through the heavy flaps of a tent. The first thing Clarke notices is  _ warmth _ . There’s a fire in the center of the circular tent, a hole in the roof above it venting out smoke as the flames eat away at large logs placed on top of them. She can’t help but practically jump towards the fire, every cell of her body screaming at her to get warm, warm,  _ warm _ . 

“Get her away from there,” a voice sounds out. Clarke doesn’t recognize it; hell, she hardly recognizes her own voice at this point. “If she warms up too fast it will do more harm than good. Bring her to the table.”

Ontari approaches her then and Clarke stares at her like a feral animal, crouching by the fire, completely unwilling to move away. She knows, in the back of her mind, that the woman who spoke is right. She’s seen frostbite on the Ark, watched her mother treat it, and she knows that rewarming the tissues too quickly will cause swelling and more pain. That’s partially why she’s in so much pain now, after sleeping by the fire the night before and then going back out into the frozen tundra. However, she can’t quite get in touch with that rational side of her brain, at least not at first. 

“Easy,” Ontari says, assessing the situation and holding Clarke’s gaze. “Let Ingrid work on you for a bit, and then maybe we can sit by the fire and have some hot tea.” 

Ontari is incredibly hard to read, or maybe it’s just that Clarke isn’t of her right mind at the moment, but she can’t glean whether Ontari is friend or foe. Her eyes are nearly black which complicates things further, and all Clarke can tell is that she is obviously very smart, perceptive, and she has a great ability to keep her face blank. It reminds her of someone else she knows, and the connection is enough to put a bad taste in her mouth about the girl. Regardless, after several more seconds of them staring at each other, waiting to see who would concede first, Clarke sighs and stands up, and hobbles away from the fire and over to the table. 

She gets her first good look at the healer, then, her  _ fisa _ , who is probably one of the oldest grounders Clarke has seen as of yet. Her hair is a mixture of dark grey strands and lighter, nearly white ones, and she is short and stout in stature. She faces away from Clarke as she shimmies herself up onto the wooden table, and appears to be using a mortar and pestle to grind up something as she hunches over a small work area. When she turns around, Clarke sees that her face is weathered and wrinkled, but her blue eyes are warm and intelligent as they meet Clarke’s. 

“You’ve gotten yourself into some trouble there, haven’t ya,” the woman says. Clarke doesn’t respond, but glances curiously at the mortar Ingrid holds as she approaches the table. Clarke can smell something herby, particularly pine and rosemary, emanating from the gritty brown paste within it. “Take off the boots. Got it anywhere else?” She asks Clarke, referring to the frostbite that is clearly evident on her face and hands, intuitive and experienced enough to know that her feet must be suffering a similar fate if the rest of her extremities have it. 

“No,” Clarke mumbles as she pulls off her boots and then her socks and lets them fall to the floor. 

Ingrid squats down to inspect her feet first, and Clarke winces as the woman squeezes at her toes and her heels, trying to tell whether or not blood flows back into them when she releases. She does the same with her hands and ears and nose and Clarke sits stoically through it all despite the excruciating pain it causes. “Yer a tough one, aren’t ya,” Ingrid muses as she steps back a bit, thinking. “I’m not gonna sugar coat it, yer in rough shape. I don’t know if you’ll keep all of your toes. Probably all of your fingers, but maybe not,” she says, biting her bottom lip introspectively as she glances over Clarke. “You must have been out of your mind being out there in weather like this. What in Heda’s name were you doing?”

Clarke shrugs and continues to stare at a spot on the floor. Ingrid is silent for a few seconds and then approaches Clarke, mortar in hand, who flinches away as she reaches for her limbs again. “You’re alright,” Ingrid says, and grabs Clarke’s ankle firmly as she squats down, placing her foot onto her thigh. “You’re Wanheda, right? Surely the Commander of Death can handle having some salve applied to their frostbite.” Clarke once again remains silent, gritting her teeth as Ingrid slathers the sticky salve from the mortar over her toes, and then wraps a piece of white cloth around them. She feels a tingling sensation and she realizes the purpose of it is to try and open her blood vessels. The grounders, for their lack of technology and any real medical training, certainly know how to make do. 

Ingrid repeats the same procedure on her other foot, and then her hands, ears, and tip of her nose. “Now, you can go sit near the fire, but you have to stay an arm’s length away. Any closer and it will only make things worse for you. I’ll need to see you at least twice a day to check on you and reapply the salve. If you start running a fever, or if you notice any discoloration not caused by the frostbite, you need to see me immediately.”

Clarke is listening, and she’s aware that frostbite can lead to gangrene if the tissue truly dies, and gangrene can quickly get into the bloodstream and cause systemic infection and, ultimately, death. She’s listening, but she stares at the ground instead of acknowledging Ingrid. The woman puts her hand under Clarke’s chin and grabs her, fingers digging into her jaw just enough that Clarke considers whining about it, and forces her to meet her eyes. Clarke holds the gaze without portraying any emotions or thoughts, allowing Ingrid to try and search her. 

“The damage with this one is more than just physical,” she says after nearly a minute has passed. She drops Clarke’s chin and goes back towards her work station, setting down the mortar and pestle. Clarke hops off of the table gingerly and hobbles over to the fire, sitting far enough away that, hopefully, Ingrid will leave her alone. 

_ The damage with this one is more than just physical. _

_ Yeah, not shit Sherlock _ , Clarke thinks as she closes her eyes and is once again confronted with the sight of her own hand pulling down on the lever at the Mountain. She swallows and opens her eyes, deciding it better to let the smoke sting them than deal with what she sees when they are closed. 

“You’ll need to keep a close eye on her. I don’t believe she’s inclined to preserve her own life. Furthermore, she’ll be of no use to Nia like this; this is not the Wanheda everyone in the villages is talking about. Let them see her like this, and she’ll lose her infamy as quickly as she gained it,” Ingrid says, speaking to Ontari about her as if she isn’t in the same tent, only a few feet away. 

“What are you suggesting?” Ontari asks. 

“A  _ speis au _ . I think Wanheda needs a  _ speis au _ ,” Ingrid says. 

Suddenly, Clarke can feel Ontari’s eyes on the back of her head, boring into her, and she doesn’t need to turn around to gather that whatever a  _ speis au _ is, Ontari isn’t a fan of the idea of Clarke getting one. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Clarke was right. 

Having been brought to her sleeping quarters by Ontari the night before, when she wakes she is warm and covered in furs. It’s a luxurious feeling, one that she allows herself to revel in for a few moments before she even opens her eyes. Her stomach is full of dried meats and fruits and grains that were brought to the healing tent for her the night before, and at her bedside is a glass vase filled with water that she drank half of over the course of the night. When she finally does open her eyes and sit up, she reaches out and finishes the rest of it in a few large swallows. 

The room is small, part of a building that Ontari usually has all to herself, an annex of the main building that she was originally brought to by Roan the day before. There are no windows, which Clarke at first finds odd until she remembers the whipping winds of the night before and then it makes sense; no windows means nowhere for a draft to leak into the room. The floors are made of a rough stone, and a fireplace is nestled in the corner in the middle of the wall across from the bed she slept in. Other than that the room is bare, and Clarke finds herself wondering, after guzzling down what had to be more than a half gallon of water, where exactly she is supposed to relieve herself. 

She’s contemplating that predicament when she hears a knock on the door and it swings open before she can even say anything, revealing Ontari who is finishing up a braid on the side of her head as she steps into the entryway. “Wash up,” she says, her eyes darting around the room suspiciously as if she thinks Clarke may have a visitor or something. “We’re meeting with Nia in 30 minutes about the  _ speis au _ .” Clarke stares blankly and Ontari rolls her eyes, wrapping a piece of twine around the end of her braid as she drops it, letting it swing down to her shoulders. “Down the hall, to the right. Last door,” she says, and with that she turns on her heel and heads in the opposite direction. 

Clarke gets up a moment later, after she’s listened and heard no indication that Ontari is still around, and goes to find the washroom. She has no intention of actually washing; it would wash the salve off her freshly wrapped extremities, anyway, and hot water would probably be excruciating; but she does need to relieve herself. When she returns to her room only a few minutes later, she finds Ontari sitting on the edge of her bed, and tenses. 

The girl appraises her with a ridiculing glare, clearly displeased, and Clarke thinks she can literally see her bite her tongue to keep whatever snarky comment she wants to make from coming out. “Well then,” she says, and as she observes Clarke, Clarke can almost see something shift in her dark eyes. With that shift the atmosphere of the entire room changes. Clarke can’t quite put her finger on it...acceptance? Understanding? “Do you know what the  _ speis au _ is, Clarke?” Ontari asks her. 

Clarke doesn’t speak, but rather lets her silence answer the question. Ontari nods as if she already knew the answer, anyway. “It means  _ forgetting _ . It’s a ceremony, a ritual, for warriors who come back from battle with wounded souls; it’s meant to help them forget the pain and the hurt and leave it behind them so they can carry on.” Clarke is surprised to hear that the grounders (albeit in other words) are familiar with PTSD. Then again, she shouldn’t be surprised; she’s witnessed their brutal ways first hand, and it’s not hard to imagine that many of them would end up mentally scarred from what they’ve witnessed or had to do. “I did not, at first, think you worthy of the  _ speis au _ . I’m still not sure you are; it’s a sacred Ice Nation tradition and you aren’t of Azgeda, afterall. But perhaps after you have begun your healing you will be able to open your eyes to the advantages of our Nation. You and I are uniquely poised to unseat the Commander, Clarke; and you are uniquely positioned to allow your people to become one with the Ice Nation and save them from Lexa’s inevitable treachery. None of it will work, though, if you are too broken to command.”

_ You don’t know me, _ Clarke wants to say.  _ Does anyone ever stop talking about Lexa? I ran away so I could leave this all behind me, yet it seems every other sentence is about Lexa or about starting yet another war. When does it ever stop? When can I just be left in peace? _

But Clarke doesn’t say anything. She lets Ontari search her eyes, surprised to find that it seems the girl’s guard has suddenly dropped, but she doesn’t allow any flicker of emotion to be portrayed in her own gaze. Ontari bites the inside of her cheek and nods about something to herself and then brushes past Clarke to exit the room. She returns a moment later with a bundle of clothing in her arms; Clarke sees fur and despite her resistance to any kind of peace offering from Ontari, she accepts it. Without shame she slips out of her clothes right there, and to her credit Ontari doesn’t seem the least bit phased. She leans against the doorway and twirls a small knife around in her left hand like she’s bored, until Clarke straightens back up, now donning much warmer clothes. 

“Alright, let’s go. Please try to stay down wind of me, you reek,” Ontari says, and leads the way back towards the main building. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

“Ontari, Wanheda,” Nia says in greeting when they enter the large room Clarke had first seen Nia in the day before. The woman raises a metal cup to her lips and drinks, and Clarke wonders what could possibly be in it; it can’t be later than 10 in the morning. Ontari sinks to one knee and lowers her head in a reverent greeting. Clarke remains standing, glancing down at Ontari and then at the Ice Queen. She has no intention of kneeling before anyone. 

Ontari raises back to her feet after a moment and Nia fixes Clarke with a narrow gaze, appraising, perhaps wondering if she should call Clarke out for her lack of respect. She is a guest, afterall. But she must decide against it, because she simply sighs and leans back in her throne. 

“What have the fisas said about your condition, Wanheda?” Nia asks. 

“Your majesty,” Ontari starts, “Ingrid has begun treatment for frostbite, and she -” 

Nia raises a hand silencing her. “I was speaking to  _ Wanheda _ ,” she hisses. To her credit, Ontari doesn’t flinch under her icy gaze, just flexes the muscles of her jaw and stands tall. 

Clarke remains silent, looking at some point on the wall just to the right of Nia. She still has no idea how to play this whole situation, has no idea which side she is on (are there even sides?), and as such, she finds it probably best to just remain silent and play up the whole traumatized warrior thing as much as she can. It will at least give her time to glean what information she can from Nia and Ontari and decide what her next move should be. 

“Your majesty, this is what I was trying to tell you,” Ontari says after it becomes clear Clarke isn’t going to say anything. “Ingrid believes that Wanheda’s soul has been damaged by the carnage at the mountain. She thinks she may require a  _ speis au _ before she can truly begin healing. She’s hardly spoken a word since she got here and she won’t bathe.”

Clarke winces a bit hearing the word  _ carnage _ come from Ontari’s mouth. She shouldn’t have flinched; it was true. What Clarke had done at the mountain was carnage, whether she tried to justify it or not. Her mouth felt dry and the weight on her chest seemed to press down harder, as if another person had climbed on top. Another body added to the cemetery that was Clarke’s heart. 

“Hm,” is all Nia says in return. To Clarke’s surprise, the queen rises from her throne. She holds her hands up to the guards at her side, signaling for them to stay, much in the same fashion she had witnessed Lexa order around her own guards, and the connection leaves a sour taste in Clarke’s mouth. Nia holds up the long front of her gown as she walks down the steps of her throne towards Clarke, her hard, icy gaze boring into  _ Wanheda’s _ , as if trying to measure her up. Clarke doesn’t move, just grits her teeth as Nia reaches out and holds her chin in her hand. The skin of her palm is surprisingly warm and soft as she grabs onto Clarke’s jaw, her fingers hooking around bone just hard enough to be uncomfortable but not hard enough for Clarke to protest. “How do I know if your soul has been damaged or if you simply wish not to cooperate?” Nia asks, but the thoughtful look on her face suggests she doesn’t expect Clarke to answer her. Something tells Clarke she wouldn’t believe her, even if she did. Something also tells Clarke that she herself doesn’t quite know that answer; it’s really a combination of both, she concludes. 

Clarke holds Nia’s gaze impassively as she continues to stare at her, searching. She doubts the queen can see anything in her eyes other than blue indifference, and the queen’s long sigh after a moment confirms her suspicion. “Well, I suppose there is only one way to find out. Initiate the  _ speis au _ ,” she tells Ontari, spinning on a heel to return to her throne. “And tell the gonas that Roan may be brought to me now,” she finishes, effectively dismissing them both. 

Clarke is surprised by the conclusion; for a historically and notoriously vindictive, harsh, punishing queen, Nia seemed to be going over the top taking it easy on Clarke. Rescuing her from the icy wilderness? Having her set up in a room with a bed piled with furs, in the same building as Ontari, her second? Having her treated by her fisas? And now, allowing her to take part in the speis au, a ceremony clearly sacred to the Ice Nation, despite her allegiance to Skaikru and past history with Lexa. 

It didn’t make sense, and Clarke turned the entire situation over and over in her head as she followed Ontari out of the building and towards the fisa tent, where Ingrid was waiting to check on her again. Arriving at the tent, Clarke, as always, remained silent as Ingrid poked and prodded and peeled away some dried, dead skin before reapplying the tingly salve and bandages. The woman spoke to her but Clarke wasn’t paying attention and then suddenly, it clicked. 

Clarke was safe here. Perhaps safer than she has been since she had stepped foot out of the dropship onto the ground. 

Nia was setting herself up for a win-win situation. If Clarke -  _ Wanheda _ \- chose to become loyal to the Ice Nation, she and Ontari, under Nia’s command, would make an unstoppable force in a war for dominance with the other clans. They could challenge the Commander and Ontari could take the flame (whatever exactly that meant, Clarke wasn’t sure, but she assumed it was the spiritual side of becoming Commander) and Clarke would rule beside her,  _ Heda _ and  _ Wanheda _ , and there wouldn’t be a soul who dared not to bow to them. And they would each be loyal to Nia and Azgeda. 

Alternatively, if Clarke decided  _ not _ to become loyal to the Ice Nation, being treated with kindness and respect during her time here was the smart move to play. Sure, Nia could simply have her executed and be done with her; but Clarke was worth more to her alive. If she decided to return to Skaikru after being cared for by the Ice Nation, after being granted the chance to see that they in fact were not savages and simply were outcasted due to bad blood with Lexa, it’s not hard to imagine an alliance could be formed between the two clans, eventually. It was a less direct path to Nia’s ultimate goal for the future, but either way; taking care of Clarke was Nia’s best option in all scenarios Clarke could think of. 

And if Nia wanted Clarke’s loyalty, surely, at least for the time being, it meant that her people would be safe from the Ice Nation. Should the Skaikru be attacked by Azgeda and Clarke found out about it, it would ruin any chance of Nia’s plans coming to fruition, and Clarke knows the queen is smarter than that. 

A sense of peace washed over Clarke for the first time in weeks. The realization that, at least for the moment, she was safe and so were her people, was enough to make Clarke almost collapse with relief. 

“You look awfully composed for someone who was just told they may lose their right foot,” Ontari says, putting her face directly in front of Clarke’s, eyeing her suspiciously. How had the girl caught onto Clarke’s change in mood that fast? Clarke tries to keep the surprise off her face as Ontari’s words register;  _ someone who was just told they may lose their right foot. _ Maybe she wasn’t as in the clear as she felt, after all. She swallows hard. 

“This is why she needs the  _ speis au _ ,” Ingrid comments, pulling Ontari away. The black haired girl keeps her eyes trained on Clarke’s, thinking. “She seems to not care at all about the fate of her limb; or herself. I will have the supplies needed for the first night of  _ speis au _ prepared by this evening. She needs to begin as soon as possible.”

The truth was that Clarke did care about the fate of her limb, and herself. Her little epiphany had revived some of her will to live, in that moment; had restored a sense of power she hadn’t felt since...well, since at the mountain. Except now, it was a hopeful sort of power, the type of power she could use to ensure there would be peace at some point in the near future. She was so tired of this endless war, these infinite battles, both within herself and among the people of the ground. If she was poised to make the necessary changes to make a lasting impact on society, to lead away from  _ jus drein, jus daun _ , then she would do it. She had to. Otherwise, after all the damage and destruction she had caused, the lives she had taken...she would never feel as though she was worthy of being alive. 

Clarke’s healing had just started, here and now; and if participating in the  _ speis au _ was something she had to do, at least she knew that this newfound strength was all her own. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

The  _ speis au _ began that evening promptly at sundown, and Clarke found herself wishing she had paid more attention to what exactly the whole ritual entailed. Ontari had been named her  _ shoun-keryon _ , or spirit guide, and she had given Clarke a brief rundown of the  _ speis au _ earlier in the day, but Clarke hadn’t been paying attention, too busy suddenly taking stock of her injuries, now that she had a semblance of a reason to care about them. 

Now, Clarke and Ontari sat in a tent that was in the shape of a dome, the off-white and weathered looking canvas that served at the roof swaying as the harsh winds outside assaulted it. In the center of the room, as Clarke was beginning to see as customary of the Ice Nation dwellings, there was a fire, the smoke of which was vented out through the ceiling directly above. Ontari had explained that for this first ceremony, all she needed to do was remain quiet, still, and sit cross legged with her eyes closed. The  _ shoun-keryon _ , before they had entered the tent, reached into a deep pocket in her jacket and pulled out a small metal container. She dipped her right index finger inside of it, and Clarke saw that when she pulled the finger out, the tip was smeared in an oily blue substance. Ontari reaches out towards Clarke’s face with the finger, but Clarke reeled back. 

Ontari  _ tsk _ ed in irritation and rolled her eyes. “This is part of it, Clarke. It’s only paint.” The muscles of Clarke’s jaw flexed as she pressed her teeth together, but then she nodded, and Ontari stepped forward, drawing lines across Clarke’s forehead and chin. She couldn’t see herself, but she felt from the places Ontari had touched her that she now had several vertical lines of light blue paint marking up and down her forehead, between her hairline and her eyebrows, and one straight line that ran from her lower lip to the dip of her chin. 

Now, Clarke sits cross-legged on the ground a safe distance from the fire, still leery of getting too close for her frostbitten extremities, and Ontari unpacks a small bundle of what appears to be sticks, leaves, and maybe herbs, Clarke isn’t quite sure. Methodically she begins to place them around the fire, and Clarke finds herself wondering if this isn’t her first time being a  _ shoun-keryon _ in the  _ speis au _ ; perhaps she had even gone through it herself. The girl certainly has enough scars, even with what little skin was visible under her heavy fur coats, that Clarke wouldn’t be surprised. 

The smoke in the air takes on a different color, texture, and scent. Clarke watches with an idle curiosity; what else is she supposed to do? The previously thin, wispy grey smoke becomes white and thick, and the scent changes from simple burning wood to something more floral, and then something bitter and earthy. She squints through the smoke and sees that Ontari has emptied her bundle and is now fanning at the fire to ensure it burns evenly, and then she heads over to Clarke, plopping down a couple of feet away, and folds her legs up underneath her. 

“Normally your  _ shoun-keryon _ would be someone you know very well; someone who knows  _ you  _ very well. This whole thing is backwards; Nia appointed me as your spirit guide so that we can be bonded in that way, but I’m not sure how successful I can be seeing as I know quite literally nothing about you.” Clarke looks ahead at the fire, listening but not acknowledging, and in her peripheral she can see Ontari staring at the side of her face, and then roll her eyes. The natblida tilts her head back and shuts her eyes and breathes in the smoke deeply. “But I understand why Nia does what she does. I mean, what other choice was there? You don’t know anyone here. And if you are to stay here in the Ice Nation, we’ll need to work together.” Another deep breath, her eyes still closed, face still pointed at the ceiling. “You need to trust me, Wanheda. Can you?”

Clarke finally turns her head to look at the girl and fixes her with an irresolute gaze. Ontari hasn’t said this many words to her since her arrival, and now here she is, rambling about how they need to trust each other and that this is a bonding experience? She’s entirely confused until she finally takes her first deep breath since the thick smoke has reached where she sits. The smoke travels into her lungs, scorching and tickling at the same time, singing her throat, and she coughs violently enough that her eyes water. 

And then she gets this lightheaded feeling with a hint of euphoria and it reminds her of the time on the Ark that she and Wells had gotten into a stash of medicinal cannabis and eaten 3 times the recommended dose. “What..what is this?” Clarke asks, the instinctive panic she feels at being unexpectedly drugged being smothered by the effects of whatever it was that she was inhaling so that her voice comes out much more nonchalant than she intended. 

Ontari laughs. “This is step one of the speis au, Clarke, we went over this.”  _ But I wasn’t listening _ , Clarke thinks, mentally kicking herself. “This is just meant to loosen us up so that we can go through this together with no walls between us. The  _ speis au _ won’t work unless you allow it to.”

Great. Great, great, great. So now she and Ontari were getting high together? This is part of the speis au? There’s nothing Clarke can do about it, now. The longer they sit in the tent the more she feels the tension slipping out of her muscles, her shoulders dropping, muscles in her neck that she didn’t even know existed relaxing. Clarke is of a right mind enough to think, in the back of her mind, that this could be very bad. There’s a lot of things she could say that could backfire and cause problems for her, her people, and for Lexa. A lot of information she could accidentally leak in an under-the-influence state. 

Lexa. She had thought the name and felt not even a twinge of pain or hate or rage; huh. Maybe this wasn’t so bad, afterall. Maybe they were on to something, these Ice Nation people. 

Ontari glances at Clarke, a questioning look in her eyes, and Clarke remembers that she had asked her a question.  _ You need to trust me, Wanheda. Can you? _ Clarke looks into the girls eyes, all walls between them effectively dropped by whatever drug is now in their system. Ontari looks younger, the lines of her face softer, and Clarke imagines she looks similar. 

“Maybe,” she says, finally, holding the girl’s gaze. 

Ontari smiles, unguarded, and reaches out, poking the blue line she had drawn on Clarke’s chin less than an hour ago. “Good enough.”

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

  
  


When she wakes, Clarke wonders why she had preferred moonshine over stolen edibles on the Ark. Her head doesn’t ache, her stomach doesn’t roll with nausea, and the only indication that anything at all happened last night is the scratchiness of her throat and the fact that she feels both a combination of lightness and anxiety. 

She and Ontari had sat in the tent, inhaling the fumes of whatever it was she had placed in the fire (Clarke still isn’t sure, and she hadn’t thought to ask) for...Clarke didn’t know how long. Hours, she assumes. They stayed there until the fire had died out, going through periods of comfortable silence and periods of conversation.

It’s those periods of conversation that have Clarke feeling uneasy now. She doesn’t remember more than tidbits of what had been said. 

_ My mom got my dad floated, and then they locked me in solitary… _

_   
_ _ They dumped us down here like literal lab rats to see if we could survive... _

_ Lexa said she cared about me and then turned her back on me… _

_ I trusted her, and because of that I ended up killing hundreds of innocent people… _

_ I turned my back on my people because I was too weak to face what I had done... _

When she put all of those tidbits together it seemed very likely that she had spilled, essentially, her entire life story. Great. She could only hope that she had given the broad, general details rather than getting into the intricacies of things. And she could also hope that Ontari didn’t remember much and was just as uneasy as she is. Because Ontari had talked, too. 

_ Nia killed my parents when they said they were going to bring me to Polis with the rest of the Natblidas… _

_ I forgave her… _

_ I should have been in the last conclave, I’ve turned my back on everything I believe in by staying here, but I owe Nia everything, and I do believe in her, and now we are closer than ever to her vision… _

_ Lexa lies, about the Ice Nation. She lies about a lot of things, Clarke… _

Unfortunately, if Ontari said anything useful for Clarke to figure out how to best use her current predicament to her advantage, she couldn’t remember. Something tells her though that the girl wouldn’t have given anything vital, anything she had been told not to disclose, and Clarke can only hope that she had kept her wits about her enough to do the same. 

She sees that a tray of some kind of grains and dried fruits has been left on the table just inside her door. She puts back on the same clothes she was wearing yesterday, still smelling heavily of smoke, and grabs the tray, bringing it back to her bed to eat. One thing she does remember is that Ontari said today they are visiting the orphanage; something about spending time with the children is supposed to be healing, which Clarke can understand. She’d even read studies about it, on the Ark. There weren’t a whole lot of children in space, and there certainly weren’t any orphans, so Clarke doesn’t have much experience with kids; she isn’t sure it will work for her the same way it would for a warrior loyal to the Ice Nation, who had grown up surrounded by village children, but it isn’t like she has anything else to do. 

The day goes by and Clarke finds she does enjoy her time with the children at the orphanage. Ontari explains to her that the Azgeda have many children, because it isn’t uncommon to lose them due to illness or exposure. It also isn’t uncommon for children to lose their parents to the same things, or to war, or outright violence. As such, they have an orphanage that raises the children who have lost their parents and there they are trained to be  _ gona _ , warriors. It’s an interesting system and as Clarke observes some of them in their training she realizes that this is part of the reason the Ice Nation’s army is so fierce. All grounder children from all of the clans know how to defend themselves from a young age, but this is different. These children are ruthless and strong and all they know is how to fight. It’s like their sole purpose is to go into war, to take down as many opponents as they possibly can. Clarke watches them train; they draw blood and she thinks she even sees one boy have his hand broken when another steps down on it, driving it into the ground with his heel. The older warrior observing says nothing, and seems pleased. 

For a member of the Ice Nation it may have been comforting in some way to see that, to watch the younger generation being brought up tough and strong and able, but to Clarke, it’s just unsettling. They eventually move on to spend time with the younger children, from infants to those that toddle around on unsteady legs. Clarke finds this much more enjoyable and peaceful, but as one of the adults places a chubby, gurgling baby in her arms, she still has an uneasy feeling in her gut. 

She smiles and plays along with the experience. She knows Ontari is observing her, but the girl also seems to be taking advantage of being the  _ shoun-keryon _ by playing with the younger children, so she is not focused enough on Clarke to detect any problems arising. Clarke watches as a small group of younger girls gather around Ontari, who demonstrates for them one by one how to disarm an opponent with a small blade. She lets the children test it out on herself and always dramatically drops the weapon to the ground, wincing and grabbing her arm as if they really hurt her. 

Clarke finds herself smiling as she watches, cataloging this image of her away with some of the information she learned about her last night. There’s definitely more to Ontari than initially meets the eye, and Clarke knows that getting closer to her would only be an advantage. Ontari looks over her shoulder then, as if feeling Clarke’s gaze, and winks, before turning back to the remaining few girls who haven’t gotten a shot at her yet. Clarke averts her gaze quickly and coos softly at the baby in her arms, trying to let herself relax and be present. 

She realizes then that the  _ speis au _ is meant for those whose battle is over, whose demons are behind them, who are home now and ready to heal. She thought, a few days ago, that that could be her. She had killed the maunon and that had been her sole goal. Everything was over, done, and she was just left picking up the pieces, trying to determine if she could live with herself, if she was worth forgiveness. Now, though, she is feeling increasingly as if what she is doing now, where she is now, is just a blip in her path. Things feel unfinished and the future seems ominous and how can one heal when they think they’re not done being hurt?

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Clarke’s  _ speis au _ is different from a traditional one in more than one way, she’s told. Not only is she the first ever non-native to receive the ceremony, she also has a few obligations that normally wouldn’t occur during the days of the rituals, like meeting with her  _ fisa _ and checking in periodically with Nia so she can keep track of her progress. 

Ingrid is still concerned about her right foot in particular. The color is not really coming back into her toes, and the venous supply seems to be limited. Ingrid draws a mark on her foot each day to track the discoloration, and it has slowly been creeping higher up her foot. It isn’t good. Clarke is concerned, too, and she has this nagging thought in the back of her mind.  _ Return to the Ark. Mom can fix this. Or if not, at least when they remove it you’ll have anaesthesia and sterile equipment. _ But she hasn’t made her decision yet, hasn’t had time to put all of the pieces together to decide whether or not she should take Nia’s offer or if she should return to her people. And the  _ speis au _ is definitely not giving her any more opportunity to do so. If she has to lose her foot, she would rather that than make a rushed decision that could end with everyone from the Ark dying because of her. 

_ Wouldn’t be your first genocide.  _

The thought pops into her head and the force of it nearly knocks the wind out of her. Ontari, who is walking beside her as they head over to the main area where the Queen waits, glances at her with her head tilted to the side. “You okay?” She asks, glancing at Clarke’s feet, assuming it’s a physical pain that elicited that response from her. 

Clarke grits her teeth and nods, looking straight ahead as she tries to steel herself for this next encounter. She’s aware of the way Ontari keeps looking at her but she just continues forward, until they reach the doors and the guards step aside, letting them pass. The two girls walk into the throne room together; Ontari drops to her knees and lowers her head in reverence, and Clarke nods at the queen, feeling a bit uncomfortable until Nia beckons Ontari back to her feet. 

“You spent time with the children today?” Nia quizzes, though Clarke is sure that she already knows this to be true. 

“Yes, your majesty,” Ontari answers. The more time Clarke spends with Ontari the harder it is to combine the multiple versions of her. There’s this Ontari, who seems like a school girl desperate for praise from a favorite teacher; there’s the Ontari she first met, hard and cold and calculated; and then there’s the Ontari she is starting to see now when they are alone together, that honestly reminds Clarke very much of herself. Burdened, hardened, but still hopeful. 

“Will Wanheda still not speak?” The queen inquires, looking at Clarke with a raised perfectly-plucked brow. 

“When spoken to,” Clarke answers. She sees a look of surprise wash over Nia’s face and she isn’t oblivious to the approving glance she casts at Ontari. The feeling of being some kind of project being worked on between them makes Clarke’s skin crawl and her fists clench. 

“You feel she’s ready for the next step?” Nia asks, directed at Ontari. 

“As ready as she’ll ever be, I believe,” Ontari says, and she feels the natblida’s eyes on the side of her face but she just continues to stare forward. 

Nia nods again. “Good. Take her to the dressing quarters and have her prepared within the next half hour. Then we will begin.”

Clarke wishes she knew what exactly they would begin, once more frustrated with herself for not listening the singular time the  _ speis au _ was explained to her in more detail. So far she hasn’t asked any questions; she, as she told Nia, so far has only spoken when she absolutely must. But as Ontari brings her into a lavish dressing room and a short man dressed in fine looking linens approaches her, holding up a blue gown to her body, she turns to Ontari. “What’s the next step?”

“I knew you had no idea what was going on,” Ontari says with an amused look on her face. “Tonight is considered the heart of the speis au. You’ll be dressed,” Ontari says, gesturing to the man who is now signaling for Clarke to strip out of her clothes. She hesitates for a moment and then remembers that grounders seem to have no shame about nudity, and she has no reason to care, so she steps out of her heavy garments and slips into the blue dress the man offers her. His hands are warm and rough as they skate up her back, cinching her in. “And your face will be painted in traditional  _ speis au _ fashion. You’ll take the  _ doteip breik au _ which will give you a chance to deal with your demons and see things from a different perspective. As your shoun-keryon, I’ll be there to guide you through it.” 

“ _ Doteip breik au _ ?” Clarke asks, unfamiliar with the words. 

“It’s similar to what we inhaled last night,” Ontari says, and Clarke can’t help but be bewildered. More drugs? This is the sacred ceremony? Drugs and playing with babies? “It’s effects are calming, and most people report having some type of higher-plane experience. Visions, hallucinations...it can be guided, so you can truly conquer whatever may linger in your subconscious that is affecting you,” Ontari says, and to emphasize her point she jabs a finger at Clarke’s chest just over her heart, and then taps on the side of her head. “It’s why you need to trust me, as I’ll be walking you through it.”

Clarke just swallows and lets it all sink in as the man motions for her sit down so he can apply paint to her face. She feels his fingers trace along her cheekbone and jaw line on the right side of her head, using his middle finger for white paint and his index for the blue. When he is finished with that he starts to work on her hair, which is quite a task after weeks of no grooming, and she feels the familiar pull and tension of braids being placed. 

She imagines it has probably been over 30 minutes since they began, and that is confirmed by the way Ontari antsy stands by the door. As soon as the man signals that he is finished with her Ontari practically leaps forward and grabs her by the wrist, lugging her back towards the throne room at a pace that makes Clarke wince with each step on her frostbitten toes. Before they push through the door, Ontari stops and takes a breath, straightening up. “When you go in there, walk straight up to the throne. You’ll have to kneel when you get there; it isn’t optional, Clarke,” she instructs, a warning in her tone. “Remain kneeling and Nia will administer the  _ doteip breik au _ , which you will take, and she will bestow her blessings unto you. After that, we can do whatever you want. I’d suggest a walk around the village to start.”

Clarke tenses at the idea of kneeling to Nia. She kneels to no one, ever. But at this time, she knows she has to go along to get along, and she consoles herself by making the promise that as soon as the speis au is over she will put all of her effort into making her decision as to whether to stay or not. It’s what they will all be expecting, anyway. For tonight, she can let her pride take a hit. 

Clarke nods finally and that puts Ontari at ease, somewhat. The girl opens the doors then and guides Clarke through with her hand on her back in between her shoulder blades. They walk towards Nia, seated on her throne, and then they each drop to their knees in front of the queen. Ontari stands after several seconds and moves to stand beside Nia, but Clarke does as Ontari said and remains on her knees in front of the throne, though her head is lifted to meet the Queen’s eyes. 

Nia reaches to her side and takes a small mug off of the table beside her throne. She hands it to Clarke. “The  _ doteip breik au _ ,” she explains as Clarke stares into the mug. 

The liquid inside looks thick and dark and Clarke really isn’t sure about this whole thing, at all. But without allowing herself too much more time to think about it, she puts the mug to her lips and downs the contents in two large swallows. The mixture is bitter and grainy on her tongue and coats her mouth even after she has swallowed it. “The effects are very quick,” Nia warns her. “It is now my duty as your queen to wish you safe travels in your journeys. May you be brave enough to face your demons, may you be wise enough to decipher what is shown to you, and may you be lucky enough to end the experience with the lost pieces of you returned to their rightful places.”

Clarke knows, from having a doctor for a mother, that drugs ingested take longer to hit the bloodstream than most other methods; however, her fingers are already feeling tingly and her body temp feels as if it has increased. She has no idea what exactly is in the  _ doteip breik au _ , but Nia was right, the effects are certainly quick. 

Nia has just returned to her seat and Clarke is contemplating standing up when suddenly the large doors at the front of the room open. “What is the meaning of this? We are not to be interrupted!” Nia barks, venom and authority heavily laced in her voice. 

“My apologies, your majesty,” the guard who opened the door and is now on his knees says, his voice wobbly. “It...I was ordered to let them pass, my Queen, please forgive me,” he says. 

Before Nia can ask him what he is talking about, two people come walking through the doors, moving around the kneeling guard as if he isn’t there. Clarke is still kneeling in front of Nia and whatever drug she consumed is coursing through her system now, making her reflexes lazy. But she knows almost as if on instinct who it is that just walked through the door, even before her eyes finally make their way up to meet green ones staring back at her. She’d recognize that presence anywhere. 

“Oh good, it’s Hexa and Tightass,” Ontari mutters, her words very clearly only meant for Clarke, who can barely contain her laughter at the nicknames. The playful facade melts from her face, though, as she goes to stand closer to Nia, hand poised over the ever-present blade at her belt, despite the abundance of guards at the door. It’s clear, then, that no one idolizes the commander here. 

“Commander,” Nia says, her voice saccharine, “You did not send word that you would be visiting, or else I would have prepared. To what do we owe the honor?” 

“Word of my arrival would not have reached you before my own, I’m afraid,” Lexa responds, always the diplomat, her tone unbothered despite being essentially in enemy territory. The sound of her voice fills Clarke with an unexpected rage. Titus, next to her, wears a much more fitting expression; tense, anxious, coiled. “On behalf of Skaikru I have come for Wanheda. They believe she became lost, and request her presence back at their encampment.”

“On behalf of Skaikru?” Clarke blurts out, without thinking. She tries to blink through the haze that is settling over her mind, and she laughs. 

“Yes, Clarke. Your people want you to come home.”

“You’ve never done anything on the behalf of my people,” Clarke argues. She means for her voice to be sharp and pointed but instead the syllables run into one another sloppily. 

Lexa’s gaze narrows and she takes a step forward, her eyes trained on Clarke, and Titus shadows her movements. Ontari moves to place herself forward, slightly in front of Nia, protective.

It takes a few seconds for Clarke to realize why Lexa and Titus are looking at her like that; wary, uncertain, confused. She’s kneeling before Nia, wearing a deep blue dress with cut off shoulders. Her hair has been braided back away from her face in an intricate design she never would have been able to do herself. Her face has purposeful, artful lines of white and ice blue oily face paint drawn across it, framing the right half of her face in a jagged looking pattern. And in front of her, a few steps higher, sits the Ice Queen, sitting on her throne with a look in her eyes that could only be described as maniacally pleased. Clarke’s expression, she imagines, is nothing short of shocked until she’s able to compose, somewhat, after several seconds, into something more indifferent. In her state, it doesn’t click in her mind exactly how dangerous of a situation this all is. It’s like a room full of combustible gas and each of them is a match, just waiting to be lit. 

This, she had not been expecting. Now, she needs to figure out if this is a wrench in her plans or an answered prayer. She looks to her side at Ontari who stands there with a grin similar to one a child might wear after they tattled on a fellow student and ultimately got what they wanted. She turns back to look at Lexa and when she does, there are two of her. She blinks hard and when she opens her eyes, there is only one Lexa, and the one Lexa looks stricken, concerned, as her green eyes bore into her own. 

“What is wrong with her?” She demands, her fierce gaze set on Nia. Titus puts a hand on her shoulder, a warning.

Clarke thinks to herself that this is going to be a trip in more than one meaning of the word, and she bursts out laughing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> doteip breik au - I made this up. I took it from a combination of the words for "fix" and "break free". It's a concoction of plants with psychoactive, hallucinogenic properties. Basically, Clarke is in for a trip; may it be a good one. 
> 
> speis au - I made this up as well, well the concept, not the word. The word means "forget" and as explained above, in this story the speis au is a ceremony/ritual
> 
> fisa - healer
> 
> I think that was it?


	4. Chapter 4

As her abbreviated meeting with the Skaikru began to come to a close, Lexa knew, unwaveringly so, that she was going to the Ice Nation. Driven on by the confirmation of Clarke’s importance by her predecessors as well as her own selfish desires, she was resolute in her decision. Just as surely as she knew this was what she had to do, she knew that Titus would never agree, at least not without a fight. She loved her fleimkepa dearly, but she knew this would be a time when she needed to exercise her power as Heda. Despite the fact that Titus practically raised her, she is the commander, and he too must bend to her will. Her leniency with him only goes so far. 

The second Lexa started to rush through the rest of the meeting, Titus caught onto her. She could feel him staring as she spoke with Abby and Kane, but she didn’t look at him. Her mind was already working overtime, figuring out the best course of action to take. Even as Commander she knew it was risky to just waltz into the Ice Nation; many of the Azgeda wouldn’t even recognize her save for the clothing and war paint she wears, differentiating her from the rest of her people. And even those that do recognize her may not take kindly to her encroaching on their territory. She knows what Nia tells them of her to ensure that their loyalty remains to their queen and not to their Commander; she knows that they have been isolated and insulated from the coalition and its benefits and as such they have little respect for the other clans. 

Allowing the Ice Nation to become that distant and disconnected was a mistake, Lexa knows. Over the years as she had allowed it, it seemed like an acceptable oversight. The Azgeda were a fair distance away from the rest of the clans. Before Skaikru came crashing down to Earth and took over the position as closest to the Ice Nation, it had been Trikru, and from Trikru it was a full, hard day’s ride on a fast horse, two days on an average one with average breaks, and several days on foot. From Polis it was even further. While, occasionally, Nia would perform war drills that would bring her army closer to the borders of Trikru that would raise the hackles of that clan, the Ice Nation otherwise kept to themselves. A sleeping army, Lexa realized, but she had decided in this instance to let a sleeping dog lie. There was the issue of Azgeda’s tendency to pick off any neighboring clans-member who might stray into their territory, but as she explained to the Skaikru leaders, so far there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about that. 

Lexa could make excuses left and right about how she had handled things with the Ice Nation. Was she overly lenient with them trying to compensate for the fact that, after Costia, she had considered wiping them out completely? Perhaps she was  _ too _ impartial,  _ too _ separated - perhaps she had gone so far trying to separate her feelings from her duty that she had gone too far. Or perhaps, rather than leniency, it could be viewed as indifference, a problem she saved for another day over and over until years had passed and nothing major had happened so she left it alone. 

She could go in circles in her mind forever trying to nail down the rhyme behind her reasons, but it was useless. Things were how they were, and now she was going to have to pay the price by going to the Ice Nation and hoping no one tried to kill her as soon as she crossed the border. She knows she can best anyone in hand-to-hand combat, but a well trained sniper in their home territory? Not much she could do about that. She could only hope no one would be so brazen as to take out the Commander in such a way. Warriors, scouts, farmers, they could simply disappear, but she could not. Her death would be noticed almost immediately and retribution would be demanded by the other clans. 

Lexa knows that this may be exactly what Nia wants, an incentive rather than a deterrent. But still, she feels an inexplicable drive to press forward with her plan, anyway. 

The meeting has come to a close and there’s no more back and forth to be had. An alliance with the Skaikru relies on her ability to return Clarke to them, and any hope of avoiding an all out war seems to rely on the very same thing. The answer is clear as ever. 

“I will attempt to return Clarke to you. It may take several days, if not longer. My scouts will need to remain here and I need your word that they will not be harmed, that they will be able to travel freely in the surrounding woods.”

Kane nodded, extended his hand, and Lexa shook it in a way that was not at all customary to her people. And that was it. A done deal. Over. 

Except it wasn’t, really, at least not as far as Titus was concerned. 

To his credit, he remained stoic in the meeting, but as soon as they were escorted back through the gates of the camp and the large metal gate swung shut behind them, he stepped in close to Lexa and began trying to dissuade her. 

“Lexa,” he said, his voice strained. “This is a ludicrous plan. You cannot seriously consider going to the Ice Nation yourself,” he says. Lexa notes the hopeful tone in his voice, and realizes that he is hoping it was a ruse, that she actually has some other plan going on. The look she gives him takes away any of that hope, and he continues without allowing her a chance to speak. “You were willing to let her die on the mountain,” Titus presses. “Now you risk your own life, risk the coalition, for one girl?”

“Things have changed since the mountain, Titus, don’t be trite. You know this. I left  _ Clarke _ on the mountain, yes, but now  _ Wanheda _ is with the Ice Nation. If Nia hasn’t already killed her and taken her power, then it most benefits the coalition that I prevent that from happening.”

“That may be true, Heda, but there is no reason for you yourself to go. Send an army,” Titus continues. 

“You and I both know that would be seen as a direct act of war. We would be feeding right into Nia’s plans, whatever exactly they may be. I’m sure she is expecting that, possibly hoping for it. What she will not be expecting is for me to come personally, and she cannot use my presence in her lands as an excuse to start a war.”

“The risks outweigh the benefits, Lexa. You let your feelings for the sky girl cloud your judgement. Can you say that if Clarke were anyone else, you would do this? You have successfully ruled and implemented change without the Skaikru for years. You have accomplished more than any Commander before you, all without Skaikru. Whatever comes next, you can face without them, too.”

Lexa’s temper flares at Titus’s words. Feelings for Clarke clouding her judgement? Does he not remember mere weeks ago when she abandoned her at the mountain? He knows her well enough to have seen the heartbreak caused by that, to know that her heart is  _ still _ aching. It always will. He knows that she chose her people over Clarke, over the only person who has made her feel  _ anything _ in years and the only person in her life that has  _ ever _ made her consider truly changing her ways. And yet he still throws it in her face. 

Lexa chooses not to address it and rather, stick to business. “That may be true, Titus, but if an alliance with Skaikru can prevent a war, then I must try to ensure it. It is my duty to do what is best for my people, and I will not choose an avoidable war over the chance of peace. As Commander I must do what is necessary in the best interest of my people, even if that means putting myself into dangerous situations. If it is my time to relinquish the flame, it will choose a wise successor. I will not have my actions controlled by fear of death.”

“Heda -” 

“Enough!” Lexa interjects, hearing the tone of his voice which suggests he is going to continue to argue. “If you wish to accompany me to the Ice Nation I will allow it. But I have had enough of this argument.  _ Ai laik heda _ , Titus, and you will not question my choices any further.”

Lexa gathers her horse from where she left it, and turns to Gustus and Katya, who have been following a safe distance behind their currently volatile leader. “Gustus, Katya, you may return to Polis. Thank you for your presence here, though it turned out to be unneeded. Inform the ambassadors that meetings are postponed until further notice, and the  _ natblidas _ are to spend their time in the map room for now. Do not speak of anything you heard here, with anyone.” Lexa doesn’t trust anyone, not really, but Gustus and Katya have never given her a reason not to, so she can only hope that they will keep this contained until she returns. Until she  _ hopefully _ returns. 

“Will you come, Titus?” She asks, already knowing the answer. 

“I will not allow you to travel alone, Heda.” 

The muscles of Lexa’s jaw visibly tighten at his choice of words; she doesn’t need to be  _ allowed  _ to do anything; but again, she lets it slide. Now that it has been settled she feels jittery and anxious and she wishes to have to focus on riding through dense trees and into snowy terrain rather than on the sinking feeling she has that in all likelihood, Clarke is already dead. What use would Nia have for her, other than to absorb her power as Commander of Death? The only reason she can think of that Clarke would still be alive is if Nia had the same fate planned for her as she did for Costia...and Lexa can’t allow herself to contemplate that any further. 

_ This is for your people _ , she reminds herself, or is that the spirit?  _ It would be nice to bring Clarke home, but that is not the sole purpose here. In fact, it’s just a piece of the puzzle.  _

“We have enough provisions for the journey,” she says, rifling through the bag attached to her horse’s saddle. There is the problem of only having two horses and not enough food for three people on their way back, but she’ll deal with that when she has to, not now. Now, all she wants to do is dig her heels into her horse’s sides and send him surging off into the trees; it’s good that he got a bit of rest during the meeting, because he will not see rest again for the next 20 or so hours; and neither will she. 

She makes a mental note to have the  _ natblidas _ spend a week doting on him when they return, as repayment, and then she sends him off into the forest beneath her, Titus and his mount following closely behind. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Although Lexa admittedly has avoided the Ice Nation like the plague since the start of her coalition, she has spent enough time memorizing maps, has enough practice navigating the forests using the stars and moon and trees as her guide, that she is not concerned about getting lost. Now and then she will notice a trampled sapling, a scuff mark in the wet leaves that coat the forest floor, and she wonders if she is on the same path that Clarke, at some point, took. 

She chastises herself for thinking of these small, inconsequential things. For thinking of Clarke as Clarke and not as Wanheda, for thinking of her own feelings, for thinking of what she might stand to gain from finding Clarke and bringing her home. She chastises herself for feeling like this may be her chance at redemption for her betrayal at the mountain; she had abandoned her, but now she risks her life for her. She doubts it will go unnoticed by Clarke that she had other, more pressing motives to rescue her, the girl is sharp as a tack, but perhaps it will be a step in the right direction. 

They’ve been riding for hours now, and though Titus has been silent, as if he can sense her thoughts now, he pulls his horse up to the side of hers. “Heda,” he says, his voice choppy and rough as he yells through the wind created by the speed of their horses, his eyes trained ahead of him. “We grow nearer to the border. Allow me to ride ahead of you, please.” Lexa nods, thinking that is the end of it, but he continues. “Lexa,” he starts again, and his shift to her informal name is not lost on her, “You are prepared for the worst? You realize we may be riding into a trap? You realize that Clarke is likely already dead?” Lexa nods stiffly, never turning to look at him. “I figured as much. Be safe, Heda. I will do all I can to ensure a safe return to Polis as swiftly as possible.” And with that, Titus surges his horse so that he canters a few strides ahead. 

Lexa has sharper senses than, arguably, anyone else on this planet. Her ability to detect when someone is watching her, her ability to pinpoint their exact location without ever laying eyes on them, could be described as a sixth sense of sorts. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she knows that they are being watched. Hardly any trees grow in this cold climate, and those that do would never support the weight of an archer. It should make her more comfortable - less places for enemies to hide - but instead it just makes her feel restless, out of her element. She knows that behind bluffs of snow, wearing light colored furs in the dips of their surroundings, there are people watching. She catches sight of them far in her peripheral, likely running off to tell whoever is up next in the chain of command what they just saw. She knows that she will reach the palace before word does, but it doesn’t unsettle her any less. 

The people hidden in the snow that they passed upon crossing into Azgeda territory were messengers, but as they get deeper in and begin to approach settled areas, the going is not as easy. She spots a child who spots her; runs screaming back towards a tent and then out pops a grown man, who yells something she can’t quite make out, and then more men appear bearing shields and swords and bows, moving to cut off the path of her and Titus. 

“This is your Commander!” Titus yells. They wait until they are closer to the group of warriors to pull up their horses. The men fan out in a semi-circle around them, weapons drawn. “You will let us pass or you will be struck down!” 

There are 5 men in total, and only 2 drop their weapons and to their knees when they recognize Lexa. “The Commander does not lead me,” one of the men says with vitriol, unwavering. “How do we even know you are the Commander? Could be an imposter. It’s not like you’ve shown your face here in years,” the man continues. Lexa observes with calm indifference painted across her face. She notes that the two men remain on their knees, heads lowered, and the other two men stand slightly behind this more brazen one, uncertain but unwilling to bend. “Not since my Queen strung up your little spy girl, that is. Figures you only show up again when the Queen has taken another of your toys from you,” he sneers. 

His fate is sealed the second those words leave his mouth. The man turns to look at his fellow warriors with an indignant smile on his face, but before he can even complete the motion a small knife hisses through the air and lands directly in the soft, hollow space above his sternum, buried to the handle. It happens with so much precision and so quickly that Lexa already has her hand back on the reins before the other men fully realize why their friend is dropping to the ground, blood pouring out of his mouth as he sputters and dies. 

“ _ Ai laik heda _ ,” Lexa says, speaking for the first time. The two men who had held their ground immediately drop to their knees and throw their foreheads onto the ground, praying for mercy that they do not deserve but Lexa grants, anyway, focused on much more pressing issues. “Would anyone else like to question my presence here?” She takes their silence as a resounding  _ no _ and her chin raises higher. “Good. Escort us to the Queen, all of you.”

Titus may have approached first, earlier, leading the way in anticipation of some sort of retaliation, but Lexa signals for him to fall back now. She will not let his concerns for her safety make her appear weak as she approaches the palace of the Ice Queen. 

Following men on foot means their horses have an easy walk, but that Lexa grows impatient. “I need to speak with the Queen at once,” she says when they finally reach the door to the building in which Lexa knows the throne room is. It is late, the sun has almost set, but she assumes Nia will still be present; in fact, she can tell she is by the number of guards posted by the door. 

“She’s in a meeting,” a guard tells her, tight lipped. His face goes a little white as he defies his Commander, but as with many of the Azgeda, he has been taught to serve his Queen before anyone else. 

“Her meeting can wait,” Lexa responds, hopping off of her horse as Titus does the same. She ignores the way her legs feel stiff and stuck from being in the stirrups for so long. “These are pressing matters.”

“To you, maybe. But there are other matters pressing to my Queen as well,” another guard chips in. Nia would not have anyone loyal to her above all else as her guards, so Lexa is not surprised by their defiance, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t grate on her. The only reason she hasn’t sent them to a similar fate as the warrior from earlier is that it would cause a commotion that could escalate into something she wishes to avoid. 

“I assure you that these are more pressing,” Lexa hisses. “Need I remind you that you must first answer to me, even above your  _ Queen _ ? Need I remind you what it means that I am the  _ Commander _ ? It is not my intention to start a fight here, but if I have to, I will finish it as well.”

The guards consider this briefly and then step forward to take hers and Titus’ horses as another guard opens the door and gestures them through. They walk briskly down the hall and Lexa can hear voices through the door leading to the throne room. The poor guard enters first, announcing their presence. Lexa only gives him a few seconds before she surges through the door, flanked closely by Titus. 

Lexa doesn’t, at first, recognize anyone in the room but Nia. The Queen looks at her with a gaze that immediately puts Lexa on guard. Her fingers twitch at her side, itching to reach for the hilt of her sword, but if there’s any hope of this going on without a hitch she needs to try and maintain the peace. 

Then the woman kneeling in front of the throne turns and her blood seems to instantaneously turn to ice in her veins. Clarke. Clarke, alive, but Clarke, with traditional Azgeda face paint and braids and gown. Kneeling in front of Nia. She hears the other girl that she still does not recognize say something beneath her breath, and then Nia addresses her. 

  
  


“Commander,” Nia says, her voice sounding so sweet and innocent that it ends up being perceived as venomous, “You did not send word that you would be visiting, or else I would have prepared. To what do we owe the honor?” 

“Word of my arrival would not have reached you before my own, I’m afraid,” Lexa responds. Her voice is even, she forces it to be so as she holds her chin high, eyes level with Nia, and takes a few steps closer to the throne. She feels Titus’ anxious presence slightly behind her, and her eyes flit briefly to Clarke, who is looking at her like she is the last person she wanted to see. She swallows. “On behalf of Skaikru I have come for Wanheda. They believe she became lost, and request her presence back at their encampment.”

“On behalf of Skaikru?” Clarke says, and then she laughs. She has the audacity to  _ laugh _ . 

Lexa looks at Clarke again then, and grinds her teeth together to keep the anger out of her voice. It looks very much like Clarke has chosen a side, here. She had not expected this; she had expected Clarke to be dead, for her head to perhaps already be on its journey to her bed back in Polis, waiting for her return. Instead, she kneels before Nia and keeps shooting glances at the other girl present, rolling her eyes. “Yes, Clarke. Your people want you to come home,” and even though she cannot draw any conclusions at this moment, it takes a lot of willpower to keep her tone neutral. The relief that Clarke is alive is quickly being outweighed by the knowledge that Clarke might be deciding to join Nia, and somewhere in the back of her mind she wonders if perhaps this had been the plan along. Titus may have been right; they may have walked straight into a trap. 

“You’ve never done anything on the behalf of my people,” Clarke argues, and Lexa notices then the way her voice sounds - wrong. Clarke is always clear and succinct and sure and instead she sounds slurred and like she simply cannot contain her amusement. Lexa’s eyes narrow and she steps closer, her gaze trained on Clarke’s face, begging her to communicate something to her, anything, to help her figure out what is going on here. Even in their short time together they had developed the knack of speaking without words, but Lexa gets nothing now. 

“What is wrong with her?” She demands, prying her eyes away so she can settle her gaze on the Queen, whose grin has now spread into a full blown smile, wolfish and pleased. She feels Titus’ hand on her shoulder and realizes she has been stepping closer to Clarke subconsciously. She shrugs it off and waits for Nia to explain, but the sound of Clarke’s laughter suddenly fills the room. Lexa has heard Clarke laugh, but never like this; this is something else, the kind of laughter that makes you roll around the floor and leaves you with sore ribs the next day. This situation hardly calls for such a reaction. 

Lexa’s hand yearns to reach for her sword again and this time she allows it to creep towards her shoulder. “What is wrong with her?” She demands again, and Nia fixes her with a coy gaze. 

“My son found Wanheda on the brink of death, wandering around the outskirts of our land. After she killed the maunon, it was the least I could do to thank her by taking her in, giving her food and shelter and medical attention. She is here entirely of her own free will, I assure you. She didn’t want to come at first, perhaps, but since her arrival it has been made clear she could leave at any time. Yet, she is still here, and she has agreed to partake in a speis au in an attempt to put the pain of her past behind her. Pain that, I believe,  _ you _ inflicted on her. She has only been here a few days and already we have seen improvement; she is eating, drinking, and finding more parts of herself. Isn’t that right, Ontari?”

The black haired girl, Ontari apparently, nods at Nia and claps a hand down on Clarke’s shoulder. Clarke stumbles to her feet and Ontari offers her a hand, steadying her. “She doesn’t look okay,” Lexa says, an observation as much as an accusation. “Regardless, I’ve promised Skaikru she will be returned to them. After they felled the maunon, I think you can agree that returning Clarke to them is the least we can do to repay them.” It pains Lexa to have this conversation at all. Her instincts and the black blood in her veins nearly demand for her to lash out, to sink a blade into the heart of anyone who dares question her. It isn’t in her nature to negotiate and reason with people she knows to be treacherous, with a Queen who conditions her own people to not trust in their Commander. But she knows that until the cards are all on the table it is in everyone’s best interest to keep this civil. 

“I know you’ve made it a point to not learn much of our ways, Lexa,” Nia says, purposely using her first name rather than Heda or Commander as she should, “but the second night of the  _ speis au _ calls for  _ doteip breik au _ . Clarke is in no condition to go anywhere right now, and in no condition to make any decisions. This is a part of her healing process, and you are already interrupting it. If you are only here for the girl, then I think it best you leave. Perhaps return in a few days.”

_ Over my dead body _ , Lexa thinks, the words nearly rising in her throat and escaping in a hiss, but she chokes them down and swallows. She looks back at Clarke then, whose eyes are too wide and her pupils too large and her head is tilted at a weird angle. She doesn’t blink as she stares back at her and Lexa feels unnerved. 

“Why don’t we ask Clarke what she wants,” Lexa says, turning back to Nia. “I cannot make her leave and you cannot make her stay; the choice is hers.”

With that, they both turn to look at Clarke, assuming she had been listening. 

Except for she hadn’t been, it seems. She taps the side of Ontari’s face and pulls her head down lower so she can whisper in her ear, but she doesn’t realize she’s speaking so loudly that everyone in the room can hear her. “Everyone’s fighting over me,” she says, and the giggle that falls from her mouth somehow makes Lexa’s heart plummet and soar at the same time. She’s never heard such a carefree sound from the sky girl. 

“Yes, Clarke,” Ontari says, rolling her eyes as she grabs the girl’s shoulders and levels her with a stare. “They want to know what you want to do. Do you want to stay or would you like to leave with Lexa?”

Clarke looks confused, and it dawns on Lexa how much power is currently in the hands of someone highly under the influence of a psychoactive drug. 

“I just want to go for a walk?” Is her response, her brows furrowed in confusion, and Lexa can’t help but groan. She looks over her shoulder at Titus who looks like he would rather hit himself in the head with a morning star than stay here a second longer and her mind races to come up with a solution that doesn’t involve them leaving the palace empty handed. Now that Nia knows Lexa wants Clarke, any pretense of safety she may have had before is, as far as Lexa is concerned, good as gone. 

“You heard her,” Nia answers simply. “We can revisit this tomorrow if you would like. I’m afraid I have no spare rooms to house you; if only you had sent earlier notice.”

Lexa’s fists clench at her sides and blood rushes in her ears. She’s about to open her mouth to spit something at the Ice Queen when Clarke interrupts. 

“Wait,” she says, and she takes a few wobbly steps towards Lexa. “I’m supposed to be facing my demons, right?” she continues, looking back at Ontari as she walks straight up to Lexa. Titus shifts imperceptibly behind his Commander, tensing. “There’s a live one right in front of me. Is it okay if she walks with us, too?”

Lexa watches as Nia’s lips curl before she schools her expression. “As you wish, Wanheda,” she says. “But the Commander will need to be stripped of any weapons. The fleimkepa, as well.”

Lexa nods, holding Clarke’s unreadable gaze, and Titus hisses, “ _ Heda _ ,” from behind her angrily as a guard approaches and Lexa starts handing over blades strapped in various places over her body. 

“Check her hair, too,” Clarke says, staring straight at Lexa, and Lexa thinks she sees a flash of something in her eyes that makes her question exactly how affected by the drug Clarke really is. But then the flash is gone and a smile that is totally unlike Clarke falls across her lips and she turns on a heel, flanking Ontari as they exit into the frigid night air. 

X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

Lexa is part of a 3 way conversation but only 2 of those people are actually there. Clarke is talking to her, but she’s also talking to someone that she, Ontari, and Titus cannot see. Ontari can’t conceal the amused, smug expression on her face and Titus has probably aged 10 years over the last several hours. 

Clarke, Lexa eventually gathers, is talking to her dad. 

“She’s just as bad as mom,” Clarke says, to whatever or whoever exactly it is that she’s seeing to her left when in fact, no one is there. She shoots a glare at Lexa and Lexa stares back patiently. “Mom betrayed you. Left you for dead. Lexa did the same to me. But turns out I’m a cockroach,” she says, laughing. “I just won’t die.”

“I know,” she says then, and she seems to be considering something. She turns to Lexa. “I just don’t get it,” she says to her, biting her lip. She glances back to her left fleetingly. “We were all ready. You were ready. You left for like, 5 minutes, and somehow just decided to call everything off? A few minutes of talking to a  _ maunon _ and you undid everything we worked together for for  _ months _ ?”

“Clarke,” she sighs, exasperated. 

“See, I told you,” Clarke mutters, not to Lexa or herself. “She doesn’t even think she did anything  _ wrong _ .”

Clarke starts wandering again, then, and Lexa follows at her side. She notices how Clarke walks slowly, strangely, limping, but she just observes. “I do not regret that I saved my people,  _ Clarke _ ,” Lexa says. “But I do regret hurting you.”

“I don’t want you to regret saving your people, or hurting me. I want you to regret the way you  _ did everything _ . Because if you just had a little more faith in  _ me _ , in my  _ plan _ , in my  _ people _ , we could have saved everyone. Your people, my people, the people that helped us in Mount Weather…”

“My duty is only to my people, Clarke. It doesn’t matter how I want to do things or how I feel. My singular duty is to protect and serve the clans of my coalition. Skaikru and the maunon are not a part of that. I wish it had been different, but it wasn’t.”

“It’s useless, I told you,” Clarke mutters over her shoulder. 

“We need to start looping back, if we plan to not spend the night out here,” Ontari interjects. They’ve been walking for hours at this point, meandering aimlessly as they follow Clarke, who has spent the majority of the time talking to people who don’t actually exist. 

Clarke doesn’t seem to hear her, or if she does, she doesn’t care. Just keeps walking straight, trudging through the knee high snow. 

“Clarke,” Lexa starts, thinking, calculating. She looks to Ontari and Titus next. “Please, walk ahead of us. I wish to confer with Wanheda alone, for a moment.” Ontari and Titus look equally displeased, but the tone of her voice signifies there isn’t room for argument, and they both walk ahead begrudgingly. 

“We need to turn around,” Ontari gripes, and then Lexa is, moderately, alone with Clarke. 

“Clarke,” Lexa says again. “How do I...how do I know if you’re in there?” she asks. 

“I’m here,” Clarke answers, and as Lexa expected might be the case, away from Ontari she does sound more coherent. “There’s just also...extra. Everything looks funny,” Clarke says, and she waves one of her hands in front of her face and giggles. 

“Clarke, I need you to listen to me. This isn’t safe. If you will return to Skaikru with me, I will ensure your safe passage. Once you’ve been returned, I have every intention to try to mend the relationship between my people and Skaikru. They will not negotiate with me until you’re safely with them.”

“Smart of them,” Clarke mutters as she continues to stumble along. 

“I want to make Skaikru part of the coalition,” Lexa says, lowly, only for them. “The maunon are gone. There is a chance, now, for true peace. Help me achieve it.”

“I don’t know if you know how to do peace, Lexa. I don’t know that you could.”

“Then show me how to,” Lexa says, earnest. “I am telling you, no matter what Nia has fed you the past few days, no matter how well you may have been treated, she is not trustworthy, Clarke. It is not safe here, not for you, not for anyone.”

“Have you ever heard the saying keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?” 

“I have plans to further integrate the Ice Nation into the coalition,” Lexa admits. “But without you on the side of the coalition, such a plan would require a war. Nia might be acting like you have a choice in this all, like you can choose to remain neutral if it’s what you wish. You cannot, and I think you know that. You have to choose a side, and it has to be soon. There have been signs of Nia’s army growing nearer and nearer their border every day with ornate military displays. This peace after the mountain is not going to hold much longer. You need to choose.”

“And if I choose to side with the Ice Nation? With Nia?” Clarke asks, holding onto Lexa’s gaze with her chin jutting out indignantly. “What are you going to do? Kill me for my power before she gets the chance to? Force me to go with you and hold me prisoner as a show of strength?” 

The muscles of Lexa’s jaw roll beneath her skin as she grinds her teeth. “Clarke,” she sighs, sounding exasperated. “I will not force you to side with me, with the coalition. I am Heda. I want you on my side, but I do not  _ need _ you. I am simply trying to remind you that you must make a choice, and that choice will have a monumental effect on how this war goes down. It could be the difference between peace and genocide.”

Clarke flinches at the word and Lexa silently chastises herself for her inconsideration as she watches Clarke’s gaze fall, her throat bobbing as she swallows. “I know,” she says quietly, but after she says it she looks over her left shoulder at nothing and Lexa isn’t sure if she’s talking to her or a ghost or an entirely different hallucination. 

“Clarke?”

Clarke sighs. “I said I  _ know _ , Lexa.” She pauses. “I’m not stupid. I knew I didn’t have a choice. I’ve never had a fucking choice. But there was no way I was going to get out of here by myself, not like this,” she says, gesturing at her frostbitten self vaguely. “And if Nia gets a whiff that I’m thinking of leaving with you…. I don’t know what to do, Lexa.”

“I will stay here until you are healed enough to make the journey back to Skaikru, if that’s what you choose,” Lexa says, easily coming up with a plan on the fly. “In the meantime, I will have a messenger send for more of my warriors from Polis to accompany us here during our stay, as well as send word of my presence here in the Ice Nation. Nia wouldn’t strike against me while I am a guest in her own lands, no matter how badly she may want me dead.” 

She leaves out the fact that that is only a theory that she, so far, has never tested. 

Clarke looks over her shoulder then at the imaginary figure. Lexa has no way of telling if it’s still her father or not. “I’m going to tell her! I’m getting to it!” she huffs, rolling her eyes at Lexa as if to say  _ can you believe that guy?  _ “Uh, Lexa, I think there’s another moving piece in all of this you aren’t taking into consideration,” Clarke starts, and she keeps nervously looking over her shoulder in a way that is making Lexa nervous as well. The guards did a thorough job searching her but she managed to get away with 3 small blades still concealed in various places in her clothing and against her skin and her hand twitches towards one of them. 

“And what is that?”

Clarke glances around again, but this time her eyes land on her  _ shoun-keryon _ . Lexa follows her gaze and then looks back at Clarke, waiting. “I don’t really know exactly what it means. Nia explained it to me but I wasn’t really paying attention and most of it went over my head. You know, dying from starvation and hypothermia and all that jazz,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “Anyway, um, she said that Ontari is a... _ nacht-bleeder _ ?” Clarke tries, testing out the foreign word on her tongue. “ _ Nah-bleeda _ ?” She tries again. 

Lexa’s spine goes stiff. “ _ Natblida _ ?” She hisses in a hushed tone through clenched teeth, her eye going wide. 

“Ding ding ding!” Clarke says, and she claps her hands together in front of herself proudly. Then she looks at Lexa and takes in her stricken expression and she sobers up a little. “That’s bad, right? I was right to tell you?”

“Yes, Clarke, it’s bad. It certainly puts a wrench in my plans, but overall I think that she can be dealt with accordingly once we -”

“ _ Heda _ !” Titus shouts, from where he is walking about 40 feet in front of them. Lexa can only make out the outline of his figure in the darkness and she squints in his direction. “There are dead scouts here! Many of them! And the tracks of an army heading south east, towards -”

He suddenly stops talking and Lexa hears an all too familiar gurgle of blood filling lungs and then Titus drops to the ground into the snow, revealing another shadowy figure that stands behind him, reaches down to pull the knife out of the back of his neck. 

Ontari. 

She has no time to mourn Titus.

“This had been fun, Commander,” Ontari says, walking through the snow towards them like it isn’t even there, unphased. She wipes the blade off on her fur coat. “But I think the fun is over now.”

Lexa has her hand around the handle of the small dagger hidden in the folds of the cloak she wears underneath her heavy coat but Ontari lunges before she can dig it out. She slams into Lexa with all of her weight and sends her careening into the snow. Lexa manages to dodge the blade that comes straight for her chest, rolling and kicking until Ontari is unlodged from on top of her. 

“Clarke,  _ go _ !” Lexa demands, as she faces Ontari, both of them crouching in defensive positions, circling, looking for the best opportunity to strike. 

“ _ Where _ ?” Clarke cries, standing helplessly as she watches the scene unfold before her. Her brain feels thick and fuzzy and she blinks hard and then there are 6 people in front of her and she groans, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. Instinctively she wants to jump into the battle, to fight beside the Commander, but her brain and body won’t obey. She remains firmly rooted where she stands, useless. 

Ontari takes a larger, longer blade from the sheath over her back, knowing her best bet is to keep Lexa as far away from her as possible, seeing as she has only a small knife. She swings and slashes, forcing Lexa to stay on the defensive, forcing her to back up and circle around to stay out of reach. She manages to dive forward and slash at Lexa, catching her forearm which quickly starts spilling black blood into the white snow, and Lexa hisses with both pain and anger. Ontari seems surprised that she actually managed to land a hit and Lexa uses that to her advantage; she lurches forward and plants a boot to Ontari’s chest and shoves her backwards. It isn’t enough to make her fall, unfortunately, but it does finally put her on the defensive as she scuttles backwards while Lexa draws nearer to her. 

Clarke watches with bated breath as Lexa stalks closer, poised and coiled like a tight spring, moving with calculated precision while she waits for her next opportunity to strike, never making a careless move. Ontari observes this and then much to Lexa’s shock, she does the only thing that could save her life.

She runs. 

Lexa sends her small blade flying in her direction but it is not meant for throwing and it’s dark and her fingers are frozen and it misses by a narrow margin. By the time she fumbles another small knife out of her clothing, Ontari has disappeared, headed straight back towards the main courts. 

Lexa is panting when she walks back towards Clarke. 

“You’re hurt,” Clarke says, taking Lexa’s arm in her hands and tracing the wound gently with her finger, trying to assess the severity, but as she looks at it she can suddenly see bone poking through and then the edges of it start to turn black and charred and her stomach rolls like she’s going to throw up. She staggers back and when she looks at the wound again, it is back to normal - a deep slice but nothing life threatening. 

“It’s nothing,” Lexa says dismissively. “Clarke, we need to go. Ontari is no doubt running straight to the Queen. Titus was right, there are tracks from a traveling army here. I’m starting to think this all may have been a ploy to draw me away from Polis while her army skirted around in the opposite direction to remain undetected. I need to get back as quickly as possible. I know these lands well enough to get us to the nearest village. It’s a few hours if we walk quickly, and we can pick up horses there.”

Clarke stares at her unblinking and Lexa thinks she may not have even heard her, until Clarke speaks. “Lexa,” she says, “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t? Will you seriously choose to stay here willingly? Clarke, it isn’t safe. Come home.”

“No,” Clarke insists, “It isn’t that I don’t want to. I physically can’t, Lexa. I can barely walk, my feet are...my feet are not good. I might lose the right one, actually,” she digresses. “You said it yourself, you need to get back as quickly as possible. That won’t happen if we go. Even if I could somehow withstand the long distance walk, I would be painfully slow. And I’m kind of high right now, too. Your eyes look really pretty when you’re scared, did you know that?”

Lexa stares at Clarke, dumbfounded for a few heartbeats, her mind racing to come up with a viable alternate plan. “I’m not leaving you here,” she insists adamantly. “Not again. I won’t. I can carry you.”

“Lexa,” Clarke says, shaking her head. “We both know you can’t. That would slow you down just as much as if I tried to walk along with you.” Lexa wishes she could argue, but she knows it’s true. “I’ll be okay. I didn’t fight against Ontari. I just stood there like a dumbass. Felt really stupid at the time, but it actually might have saved my ass. They’ll come this way looking for you and me and I’ll still be here and I’ll just keep up this whole charade that I’m siding with them and I’ll be fine, for now at least.”

The spirits tell Lexa that this is the only viable plan. She squints her eyes shut, trying to drown out their voices. They’ve made her leave Clarke behind before, and she vowed to never do so again. She didn’t know she would be faced with this again so soon. 

“No,” she insists. “I won’t. I am not leaving you here, Clarke. If we have to walk slow, then so be it. We need to leave,  _ now _ .”

“Lexa, you know that will only end with both of us being caught. You need to leave and you need to go now. I’ll do my best to stall them when they get here. Go. Your people need you. I ask you to please keep mine in your mind as well when this all starts going down. I’ll do what I can on my end, if I have a chance to. I choose you, Lexa. I choose peace and I choose the coalition. Right now the best way I can benefit that cause is by staying here and letting you get back to Polis as quickly as you possibly can,” Clarke says.

Again, the spirits agree. The inside of Lexa’s chest is burning red hot from her anger and frustration and she feels like she might implode. 

“If you see my mom, tell her I love her,” Clarke says. She smiles but it doesn’t touch her eyes and she starts backing away. 

“ _ Clarke _ ,” Lexa says, and her voice is pleading in nature. The Commander never pleads. 

“You have to. It’s okay. I know you don’t want to, but you have to. Now go. You’ve wasted too much time already,” Clarke says, waving her hands at Lexa in a shooing motion. “May we meet again.”

Lexa wants to scream but she doesn’t. She stiffens up and she clenches her jaw so hard it’s a surprise her teeth don’t shatter in her mouth. 

Clarke is right. She has to leave her. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who engages with this fic, whether you are new or a regular. It really means a lot to me and goes a long way giving me motivation to keep writing this despite my hectic IRL schedule.

Clarke lays in the snow, shivering and trembling and cold, and she thinks for not the first time that she is going to die here in the Ice Nation territory (although the first time, she hadn’t known that’s where she was) alone and encased in ice and frost. She can almost hear Ingrid in her head, bemoaning her for undoing all of her hard work, as she feels a familiar sensation of excruciating pain and, somehow at the same time, numbness, in all of her extremities. 

Consider mission _ Don’t Lose All of Your Toes and Fingers _ \- failed. 

That, and she now sports a nice blood split lip and a throbbing cheek bone, her right eye quickly swelling to the point that she can hardly see through more than a thin slit - not that there’s all that much to see, as she lays on her back and stares up into the night sky. She’d made Lexa do it - hit her - before she left, because she is  _ Wanheda _ , afterall, and if the Azgeda warriors arrived to find that the Commander had slipped from her grasp without a fight, they may lose faith in her, and then what use would she be to them?

Her wrist feels bare and empty, an inconsequential fact that she really has no reason to be thinking about, not now, when so much hangs in the balance. But the absence of her father’s watch over the jutting bones of her wrist may be all that can save her people, in the end - Clarke had given up what felt like the last piece of her heart when she gave the watch over to Lexa, pressed it into her rough and calloused palm. 

_ “Please, when you ride to my people, show this to my mother. Tell her that I remember the time she took away my favorite stuffed animal for a week when I hid it under my pillowcase, so she knows I gave it to you willingly. Tell her that there is no avoiding this war and the only chance for peace is to make sure that the Ice Nation does not win,” she had said. “And tell her that I love her, and I’m sorry.” _

_ “Clarke,” Lexa had warned, a foreign sort of vulnerability in her green eyes as she looked at Clarke, her body already poised towards the distant trees as if she was being pulled back towards her people by a magnetic force. “I will give her this, and I will tell her, but I need not tell her a goodbye from you. I will come back for you, I promise. I will send warriors. Just hold on. Please, just hold on.” _

_ And then she was gone, and Clarke’s still outstretched hand was suddenly empty of the warm tan fingers that she had been clinging onto, and she was alone. _

  
  


She’s been counting her heart beats ever since Lexa left, dully aware of the fact that they are slowly becoming further and further apart. What she cares about is that the more that she counts, the more of a head start Lexa has gotten. She loses track three times (or more, who knows) but starts over each time, and then she feels the approach of a group of warriors before she hears them. The hooves of their large, burly horses beat through the snow, striking hard and frozen ground and the reverberations go through her flaccid body long before she can hear voices in the distance. 

She briefly wonders if they will see her at all - if they will ride right past, leaving her to die, or if they will ride right  _ over _ her, trampling her into the snow and saving her from the long and drawn out end that is hypothermia - one she has already lived half through twice now. But Ontari is with them, and either she can somehow pinpoint the spot they had all been in even in the vast nothingness that is this large field of endless white, or maybe Lexa’s blood on the ground is visible to highly trained eyes, but she spots her. 

“Stop,” she yells, and Clarke hadn’t realized exactly how loud the horses and warriors were until suddenly they all halted and went quiet. Only the quiet breathing of the animals remained. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she glanced up, behind where she lay, and counted. Eight. Could Lexa hold off eight, if they found her? In this snow it’s not possible to cover your tracks, at least not to Clarke’s knowledge. They would find her, and she would have to be able to. 

“Alek,” Ontari barked, “Take her back to camp. Now. Get her to Ingrid.”

That’s better - seven, Clarke thought, and she was vaguely aware of someone hopping off their horse, scooping her into their arms and placing her roughly across the front of their saddle, so she lay folded in half with her stomach pressing into the withers of the horse, arms and legs dangling down loosely on either side. 

As soon as she was settled Ontari and the others took off in the same direction as Lexa, and Clarke and Alek were heading back to the main camp of the Ice Nation, directly back into enemy territory. Clarke didn’t have time to worry much, because only a moment or so after Alek turned his horse around, it was lights out for her. 

  
  


X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

  
  


When Clarke wakes up it is not of her own accord. In her deep state of unconsciousness as her body tries to preserve what’s left of her life, she can feel the cold splash of ice water on her face. Again. 

Again.

_ Again _ . 

Just when she is finally, reluctantly, about to stir, a set of fingers pinches her nose and then a hand clamps over her mouth and Clarke jerks and gasps awake after all of her air has been cut off for nearly half a minute. She flails upright and a stabbing pain runs straight up her spine, across her neck and skull, until it settles in her temples and throbs, her whole body objecting to the sudden movement and her sudden awakeness. She coughs as she gasps for air and she blinks with eyelids that feel heavy and coughs from the dryness of her throat. 

She takes in the site of the Ice Queen standing in front of her, flanked by two men whose presence seems mostly customary - the Queen doesn’t go anywhere unguarded, not even to visit a half dead sky girl. 

“ _ Nia _ ,” she hears Ingrid scold, to the side of her. “She is sick, and injured. I warned you that if she didn’t wake, you needed to leave her be. She is of no use to anyone if she is dead.”

Oh, crap. Ingrid had said the  _ D _ word, so maybe Clarke hadn’t been being dramatic when she was lying in the snow earlier, after all. How long had she been asleep, anyway?

The men standing behind Nia tense at Ingrid’s words, and Clarke guesses that just like not many people get to refer to Lexa as, well,  _ Lexa _ , not many referred to the Ice Queen by her first name, either. It made them uneasy, Clarke could tell by the way their eyes snapped to their queen, their backs rigid, standing at attention. It’s the same way Lexa’s warriors regard her whenever she addresses the Commander in a way they deem disrespectful. 

“She’s of little use to us if she has chosen to side with the Commander, and I’ll not have resources wasted if that is the case,” Nia insists, her words sharp and biting. 

Clarke tilts her head at that, and with the motion everything in the room starts to spin, but she ignores it. So, the charades have been dropped already; that hadn’t lasted long at all, yet still somehow longer than Clarke had expected. It’s a wonder she still had her head at all, really. 

“You have nothing to say, Wanheda?” Nia asks, fixing her with a piercing gaze like Clarke is prey. 

She opens her mouth to respond but all that comes out is a croak. She clears her throat, tries again, but her throat is still thick and she realizes then that her entire body feels hot. Too, too hot. “I -” she starts, swallowing again. 

“Nia,” Ingrid interjects, scolding again, stepping up next to Clarke now. “She is ill. If you do not let her rest, she -”

“Wanheda is a warrior, and she will act and be treated as such. If she has information, she will offer it, and if not, she is a traitor and your worries are misplaced, anyway. You give her no dignity fretting over her like she is a child,” Nia snaps, holding out a silencing hand. She looks back at Clarke expectantly. 

Clarke’s tongue feels like a too-large wad of cotton stuffed in her mouth and her words sound weird when she is finally able to force them out. “So either I have information or I am a traitor?” she asks, her voice very much not sounding like her own. Everything looks a little tilted, for some reason, despite the fact that her head seems to be straight. Perhaps Lexa hit her a little too hard; Clarke doubts she could calibrate her punches to be just hard enough to bruise. Lexa is a highly trained warrior and she knows no middle ground in that area, Clarke figures. 

“You tell me,” Nia replies evasively, and Clarke is coming around, waking up, enough that she can finally sense that she is in real danger here. Nia thinks she knows something - why, Clarke doesn’t know - but she doesn’t, not anymore than the fact that Lexa is heading back to Polis, and she’s certain Nia has already gleaned that, anyway. 

She feels a flicker of something warm in her chest when she realizes that Nia being here questioning her means that they haven’t caught Lexa, at least not yet. Why get secondhand information if you already had the source?

“I have no information, and I am not a traitor,” Clarke says. “Though as I have struck no alliance with your people, even if I did know something that could be of use to you and withheld it, I would  _ still _ not be a traitor.”

“Do you think it wise to antagonize me, now, Clarke? We are heading into a war, and you are, Ingrid tells me, very ill. I do not have to lend you my best healer, not when I could be sending her south to tend to my army. Nor do I need to instruct my lead  _ gona  _ to give the sky camp a wide berth.”

“I’m not trying to antagonize you,” Clarke replies, honestly. “I am suggesting to you that now might be a good time to ask me about an alliance. It is true that I don’t have information, not anything you don’t already know, but it is also true that not only do your people look to me as some sort of legend, I know and understand Lexa perhaps better than even you. She left me to die at the mountain,” she continues, and the words don’t burn any less no matter how many times she thinks or says them out loud. “And she left me to die in the snow, just now. My people have tried to side with her and she has done nothing but use and manipulate and abandon and scorn us. My indecision previously was less about whether or not to ally with you or Lexa - it was my hesitance to ally with anyone at all. I did not realize you were already sending your army marching. I realize that I no longer can choose to remain neutral.” 

They are Lexa’s words, reconfigured. She allows herself to think of her for only a few seconds - she wonders if she were to die, if she might be able to feel it somehow. 

“And what are the terms of your alliance?”

_ Huh. Good question _ , Clarke wants to say, but she bites her tongue. She’s not sure if it's her concussion or her fever or the remaining effects of whatever drug it was that she had ingested all those hours ago still lingering in her veins but she doesn’t feel quite right, not like herself. “I...I need time to think about that,” Clarke eventually admits, unwilling to make terms with the queen while she’s half in the bag, no matter the reason. “Obviously, I want my people safe. I want them left out of this.”

“Your sky people have weapons and technology that could be very valuable to us, Clarke,” Nia points out, and in her tone is a challenge for Clarke to argue. 

She doesn’t. She can’t give answers, she can’t make any deals, not now, but she can stall. She’s good at stalling. “I know,” she answers, to which Nia seems pleased. “And I can help negotiate terms with them, but not now. I don’t...I don’t feel right,” Clarke says, and she’s breathing heavily from the overwhelming exertion that it is taking for her to simply be awake and half conscious right now. 

“My queen, I warned you this may happen,” Ingrid says, eyeing Clarke nervously. She places her hand around the curve of her forehead and the expression on her face tightens. “Her fever is worsening. If I don’t operate soon, she will die. It may already be too late.”

“Then do as you must,” Nia says, and with that she turns on a heel and exits the healer’s tent. 

“My foot,” Clarke mumbles as she lays back down on the cot. She doesn’t need to look down to know that it is the source of her current predicament, and she doesn’t need Ingrid to tell her that the fever that is raging through her and making her sweat and shiver at the same time is because she is going into septic shock. 

“Yes,” Ingrid says, “Your foot. I have to -”

Clarke cuts her off with a short, “I know.”

Ingrid gestures over two men that Clarke hadn’t even noticed were standing in the corner of the tent, despite how small of a space it is. She raises a bottle to Clarke lips and tips liquid in, most of which Clarke sputters straight back out, coughing violently. What she does manage to swallow scorches her throat so badly that her fever suddenly feels like a cool winter breeze all around her throat and stomach. 

The effects of the alcohol are quick, but Clarke knows that it isn’t enough. She knows what is about to happen, what Ingrid has to do, and if she weren’t so delirious she might be much more afraid, much more concerned at the nonsterile environment and lack of proper equipment and the fact that until she passes out, she is going to feel  _ everything _ . 

“Hold her down. I need her as still as possible,” Ingrid orders the two men, and Clarke fights her instinctive drive to struggle against them as one drapes over her upper half and holds down her arms, and the other ties her good leg to the cot and then presses his weight into the one Ingrid will be working on, pinning it down. 

She remembers hearing Raven’s screams when her mother worked on her without anesthesia for what felt like hours. Clarke is not as strong. The jagged edge of a blade bites into her skin just above her ankle and at the first excruciating wave of pain that shoots up her leg and through her entire body, she passes out. 

It’s the first thing that has gone right for Clarke in a long, long time. 

  
  


X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

  
  


When Clarke wakes up it is with one less lower extremity. 

She feels more like she is coming back from the dead than getting up from a long sleep. She finds out from Ingrid that she has been unconscious and fighting for her life ever since the night of her impromptu surgery which was now 3 days ago. Even with the source of the infection now removed, the bacteria still remains in her blood, and for the last few days it has been touch and go. 

That she is awake now is a good sign, but she is far from out of the woods. There is still a high risk for secondary infection from her new incision site and while her temperature has gone down to a more acceptable level, she remains flushed and clammy and too-warm. 

And the pain. 

The pain is so unbearable that Clarke wishes she could pull the cloak of unconsciousness back over her and never peek her head out from underneath it again. It is so intense that she wonders if the fever is from infection or her body’s response to feeling like there is still a blade churning through her flesh and bone, constantly, never ending. The foot that no longer remains still somehow hurts her, as if out of spite at having been disconnected from the rest of her. Amputations weren’t common on the Ark, but she had heard her mother once talk about phantom limb pain during her trainings with jackson. 

Ingrid gives her tea and Clarke recognizes dried opium poppy when Ingrid places it in a strainer and pours boiling hot water over it, into a mug that she presses against Clarke’s lips. She urges her to drink but Clarke can only manage a few mouthfuls before she feels like she’s going to vomit, and the tea has long since gone cold before she can manage any more. 

Clarke is awake mostly but she is not really there. She flutters in and out of consciousness, in and out of a dissociative, catatonic state, only ever truly responsive enough to eat a few pieces of bread that Ingrid soaks in water and drink pitiful mouthfuls of medicated teas. 

On the fifth day Nia barges into the tent and she strikes Ingrid across the face when she tries to prevent her from marching straight up to Clarke, where she lay in dirty and soiled clothing in a bed made damp by her own sweat. Clarke might have felt bad for the poor old woman - she knows she is not an easy patient and that Ingrid is genuinely trying her best to save her - if it weren’t for the whole being gravely ill and deep within enemy territory and having just lost her freaking  _ foot _ thing. 

Nia’s words lure her out of her lazy and dazed state better than any food or drink Ingrid has shoved down her throat over the last handful of days. “Wanheda,” she says, and Clarke can sense that whatever patience the Queen may have had with her in the weeks she has been in the Ice Nation has waned down to nearly nothing. “You speak with the Commander in private and then let her escape back to her people when she discovers I have sent my armies marching to Polis. Now, I receive word that she has met with the Skaikru and that they along with half of the Commander’s army march for the mountain. You still expect me to believe you do not know more than you say? To believe that you are not in fact a spy that has been cleverly planted within my own walls?”

Uh oh. 

Clarke isn’t a spy, she really,  _ technically _ isn’t, but she can very much see why Nia would accuse her of being such. She allows herself only a few seconds to feel relieved by the fact that Lexa had reached her people and they are working together. To do what, exactly, Clarke doesn’t know, but her people are still alive and safe for now and that’s what matters. 

But why the mountain? How could they go back there? Clarke remembers that the whole reason she is in this situation is because she bore what happened at the mountain squarely on her own shoulders. She may be highly adverse to even the thought of stepping foot back into the mountain, but she can see how for those not haunted by what had happened in there as badly as she is, it would be an advantageous position to take in a war. 

But Lexa wouldn’t run and hide, and Clarke imagines that Nia knows that as well. She’s up to something, there has to be a  _ reason _ , but Clarke can’t quite put it together now. Her mind feels sluggish and there’s a whirring in her ears like she is trying to start up a really old computer riddled with viruses. 

“I cannot make an alliance with a people who have already struck a deal with Lexa,” Nia says, in the space that Clarke is supposed to be explaining herself. 

It’s easier to discuss this than it is to try and convince Nia that she isn’t a spy. The words come much easier. “They don’t know there’s another choice,” Clarke explains. “They’re allying with her because she must have convinced them it’s the only option. They already denied her once - that’s why she was here. You know they don’t want this. Give them the choice,” Clarke tells her. 

Nia is anything but dumb. “It’s too late to give them a choice, Clarke - they’ve already made theirs. I’m growing tired of these games and do not think I have not noticed they way you skirt around my questions. I have been nothing but a gracious host to you and I do not appreciate being taken for a fool,” Nia spits out, her words sharp and pointed. “You gave me false information about your leaders, as well. You say Abby and Kane are in charge in your absence, however I hear that Lexa has been conferring mostly with a man named Emerson, and he is leading the armies towards the mountain.”

_ Emerson? _

Those stuck, rusty gears start turning in Clarke’s mind again, but this isn’t evident in her blank stare as Nia stands there, waiting for her to say anything of use or indicate that she should not have sent her head off in a box all those days ago rather than entertaining the idea of keeping her alive. 

The Ice Queen looks to Ingrid with an unimpressed sneer on her lips. “No food, no water, until Wanheda can offer me an explanation or  _ anything _ of use. That’s final,” she tags on the  _ that’s final _ part because Ingrid’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head. All of her hard work, only to let her starve and dehydrate? “And if she does not find that motivation enough to make herself useful, I can think up some other ways.”

  
  


X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X

  
  


It actually works out perfectly in Clarke’s favor, that she has been given time to think, because it’s not like she has been eating or drinking much, anyway. She had known immediately when she heard Nia say that Lexa’s army was marching with Skaikru to the mountain that something was up. Something she hadn’t considered, something that had changed since she last saw Lexa, because at that point her people were refusing to cooperate with her. 

She just had no idea what exactly they were doing - she was missing a piece of the puzzle - until Nia said the name  _ Emerson _ . That had to be the big thing that had changed, he had to be the reason they were suddenly going back to Mount Weather...but why? Clarke wracks her brain over and over again. They’d destroyed the acid fog systems. There was no one left alive in the mountain. The computer systems were, according to Monty, going to be pretty much unusable after being reprogrammed and hacked into so many times and then cut off without power for months, without any temperature or humidity control. 

She comes back to the idea that they are holing up in the mountain, to perhaps simply wait out Nia’s approaching army - but no, that doesn’t make sense. They can’t wait there indefinitely, not without years of planning and stocking and supplying - and Lexa wouldn’t hide. She wouldn’t leave half her army at Polis and the rest of her civilians in their villages to be pillaged by the Ice Nation. That’s not it. 

There’s no more acid fog. No more reapers. The surveillance system is probably shoddy at best, if Monty can get the computers going (and of course he could, he’s  _ Monty _ , but it would take time, and Nia’s army has to be near Polis already, if not already there). They’re not using it as shelter. 

Then  _ why _ ? 

Clarke briefly, but mercifully, falls asleep, after hours of thinking and writhing in pain from the bloody stump that now exists at the end of her leg instead of a foot. Her fever is still at bay, only mild, and when she wakes up she, for the first time in several days, does not feel like she is on death’s doorstep. At least, not in the sense that she is going to die from sepsis, because Nia very well may decide to end their little game once and for all. 

She struggles to sit up and one of Ingrid’s assistants takes a step forward, eyeing the end of her leg that is wrapped in gauze and stained red, and holds out a hand. “Miss,” he says in warning, begging her to stay still, to stay laying down, and that’s all it takes. It clicks into place. 

The missiles. 

Oh, fuck. The missiles. Emerson, and Monty...they could get the missiles going again. She doesn’t know why Emerson would be helping them, but he must be under duress to be with them at all...it doesn’t matter. They could do it, she knows they could. They hadn’t thought about disarming the missiles, because it hadn’t been necessary for their objective at the time, which was to get their people  _ out _ , not attack far away enemies. Far away enemies like the clan that has been a thorn in Lexa’s ass from the moment she became Commander and formed the coalition. 

This most recent indiscretion of the Ice Queen and her people has been one step too far for Lexa to simply kill the warriors and be done with it. Nia has Ontari, a nightblood, and Clarke figures that she is not fighting in the war for she is too valuable to what Nia plans to come  _ after _ the war, complete and total insurrection, unseating of the Commander if she lives through the war at all. Nia and Ontari are the problem, the head of the snake, and the gona are simply byproducts of a corrupt, power hungry Queen. Kill Nia and Ontari, along with their likely permanently-corrupted followers, and Lexa would be done with this once and for all. The coalition is her greatest achievement and the Ice Nation has proven to be its greatest threat. It would only make sense to eliminate it altogether. 

But it can’t be that easy - if Clarke’s people know she is alive, they would never let Lexa bomb the Ice Nation while she’s within their territory. If Lexa had known that the missiles were an option  _ prior _ to her meeting with them after finding Clarke in the Ice Nation, she may have had the foresight to tell them that Clarke is dead, perhaps died on her way home, so that they would have no qualms about firing the missiles right into the ice. But without knowing about the missiles, Lexa undoubtedly informed them that Clarke is alive but was too unwell to make the journey home, and presented them with her watch and story as proof. 

But if it came down to it, if the Ice Nation really was going to win the war and the rest of her people were at risk...well, a decision would have to be made. One that neither Lexa nor her fellow Skaikru would want to make, sacrificing Clarke to ensure the safety of their people and the best chance at a peaceful future, if that even exists on the ground. 

So, Clarke thinks she understands what is happening, but ultimately all she is doing is guessing. She’s taking context clues and piecing them together to try and get a grip on what exactly is going on all those miles away and she thinks she is right but she could also be  _ wrong _ . 

And even if she is right, what will she do with that information, anyway? She obviously can’t tell Nia about the missiles - if it truly is a contingency plan in case things tip in favor of the Ice Nation, then she needs to make sure Nia never finds out about them. 

Nia doesn’t visit her again until the next day. Clarke has gone a full 24 hours with no food or water, although she thinks Ingrid is purposely using an excessive amount of water to wash the sweat away from her face throughout the day, and if some of the droplets happen to run into her mouth, well, it’s an accident. Truthfully, she doesn’t feel much worse for the wear, because she is simply getting used to feeling broken and starved and dehydrated. 

“Still choosing silence?” The Queen asks, arms folded across her chest as she sweeps in through the flaps of the tent. The cold air that sneaks in with her is enough to make Clarke shiver. 

“I told you, I don’t know what they’re doing at the mountain,” Clarke insists, and it isn’t really a lie, because she only has a  _ guess _ , she doesn’t know. “There’s nothing left there that could be of use. We disabled everything as soon as we got in.” Okay, that’s a bit of a lie, but who cares. 

“You claim to understand Lexa better than I do,” the Queen scoffs, “and you cannot explain to me why she is behaving in a way that is extremely uncharacteristic of herself. The Commander may be weak and naive, but she is prideful, and she would not hide. She is up to something, and if you can’t figure out what that is, you’re of no use to me.” Nia paces the short distance across the tent, but her penetrating gaze never leaves Clarke. “My army is fairing well in Polis; my lead  _ gona _ tell me they will have taken control and will be able to send the remaining army to the Mountain within the next day or so. It will be hard to attack the Mountain from below. If you cannot offer me information about how to get inside or how to attack or how to get Lexa out of the mountain, you’ll find your stay here cut short.”

It’s a thinly veiled threat on her life but there isn’t much Clarke can do about it. There’s no way she would tell Nia about the missiles, because it might be the only thing that can save her people and the coalition, if either of those things exist after the armies clash at the mountain. If it means she has to die to keep the information concealed, well, her wandering around in the forest that had landed her in Nia’s grasp was a suicide mission in and of itself, was it not? Different means, but similar ends. 

Nia is not pleased by Clarke’s silence. “Ingrid,” she says, “You were concerned about the state of Clarke’s ears, were you not?”

“I - I was, my queen, however they have since been healing nicely with the -”

“Remove them,” Nia says, cutting Ingrid off. The woman goes pale and opens her mouth to speak, but Nia continues. “I know she knows something and is not telling me. I can practically  _ smell _ it. Consider this a warning,  _ Clarke _ ,” she says, and she uses her informal name rather than Wanheda like it is a dirty word, “because there are much more valuable pieces of you I could have removed if you prove yourself a traitor in my lands.”

The Ice Queen stalks out of the tent at that, leaving both Ingrid and Clarke and the two assistant fisas all in a stunned kind of stupor. The old woman turns to face Clarke. “Clarke, I...you know I have to obey the Queen,” she tells her, barely able to meet her eye. “I must do as she says. She will kill me if I do not, and she will only have someone else do it, anyway.”

Clarke shakes her head and once again she is aware that she should be a lot more concerned about what is happening to her - or what is about to happen - but she just doesn’t have it in her. The only thing keeping her going through the pain and sickness is that she might be able to help her people somehow, someway, even from so far away. 

“No, I know, Ingrid. It’s okay. I understand. Do what you must. I will survive.”

She lays back on the bed with her eyes closed, a compliant patient even as she is strapped down to the cot again and the two men position themselves to hold her head still, even as she hears clinking metal while Ingrid gathers the supplies needed for this type of procedure. 

It will all be worth it if her people can make it through this war. Her reasons for leaving them had been selfish, but now everything she does, at this point, is for them. 

  
  


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The pain from the removal of her ears is, compared to that of the removal of her foot, not very bad at all. The blood loss and increased risk for infection is concerning, and that is not to say that it doesn’t hurt at all because it  _ does _ , but Clarke thinks she can deal with this. She knows that she has to. 

Clarke is sitting propped against the wall behind the bloodied cot with long strips of fabric encircling her head and her new wounds when Nia returns the next afternoon. The way she smiles wickedly upon her entrance makes Clarke’s stomach turn before she even speaks. 

“We have taken Polis,” she informs Clarke, still grinning madly, her eyes wide and darting all over the small space erratically as she paces around. She exudes a sort of frenetic, frenzied energy that makes Clarke’s heart beat a little faster in her chest and fills her with nervousness. “And 2 formerly opposing clans have, upon seeing how fast their capitol fell and the way their Commander abandoned her city, have chosen to join forces with us. We will still be at a disadvantage when we march to the mountain, but we now outnumber the rest of Lexa’s army almost 2 to 1.”

If Clarke wasn’t already sweaty and clammy despite the cold from her ordeal, her palms would have gone clammy then. Her chest tightens at the news, but she forces her expression to remain unaffected, impassive. 

Lexa might actually lose this war. The coalition is already crumbling. 

“I am poised to win this war, Clarke,” Nia continues, her gaze now trained on her, appraising, trying to peel back the layers of defense Clarke has put up to keep her from being able to read her. “And you have not been of any help. I may go so far as to call you a hindrance,” she spits. 

She pauses, waits for Clarke to say something, anything, perhaps to spill whatever it is that she knows about Lexa and her plans or what she might be doing at the mountain. Knowing that Nia’s army will now outnumber both her people and the remaining of Lexa’s army, Clarke has to think on her feet. Words come tumbling out of her mouth before she even fully forms any semblance of a plan. 

“You need to draw Lexa and her army out of the mountain,” Clarke starts, her mind working so quickly she can hardly keep up with her own thoughts. “As you said, from a higher vantage point their archers and my people’s - Skaikru’s - snipers will be able to pick off a good portion of your army before they even reach the tunnels and the doors. It might be enough to be crippling.”

“This is nothing I don’t already know, Clarke,” Nia says impatiently, but Clarke can tell she has her attention. 

“What if there was a way to not only draw Lexa and her army out of the mountain, but also cause Lexa to over react? To play into her weakness, into her emotions, and cause her to act out of anger rather than with any tactical skill. And have the same effect on Skaikru, as well. They’re thinking with their heads now - we need to get them to think with their hearts. That’s what will throw them off, and give your army the advantage they need.”

Nia has stopped her pacing and she stands very still as she listens to Clarke, thinking, trying to put the pieces together at nearly the same time that Clarke is, too. 

“And you have a plan to do this, I assume?”

“I do,” Clarke says, and she swallows, works very hard to maintain her composure even though she is essentially about to order her own execution. “Me. Lexa will never forget you sending her Costia’s head to her bed. My people would be so outraged and they would blame Lexa. They would not only splinter and end their shaky alliance, blaming her, but they would act irrationally. They would be so angry and want so much blood in return that they might give up their post in the mountain and either charge or try to head off your army, not knowing how much larger it has gotten.”

Nia listens and remains silent even after Clarke has stopped speaking, which she will take as a sign that she is considering what she has said. 

“First, you are only assuming that they would react that way. We have no way of knowing,” Nia muses. “And second, this must be some sort of trick. Surely you would not propose your own death and set your people up to be destroyed? You are up to something,” Nia accuses immediately, intuitively. 

She doesn’t know about the missiles, but Clarke does. And Clarke knows that if Lexa and her people think she is dead, and that they may very well lose this war, they will use the missiles to decimate the Ice Nation, their Queen, and Ontari. Clarke can only hope that if they do that, and the Ice Nation army knows that Nia and Ontari are dead and so is the rest of their entire nation aside from the soldiers left at Polis, it will be enough for them to back down from the battle at the mountain and beg for mercy. Enough for the 2 disbanded clans to fall back into line and back with Lexa. 

Enough to save her people and potentially the coalition along with them. 

But proposing her own death and a plan that would end with the death of most of her people does seem suspicious, Clarke knows this - so she changes gears a bit. “We only have to make Lexa and my people  _ think _ I’m dead,” she elaborates. “You have, what, 3 of my body parts now? My foot, both my ears - even if they’re thrown out, it’s so cold I’m sure they’re preserved fairly well. Send along a bloody braid of hair, that is the custom of Lexa’s people for their fallen warriors. It should be enough, especially given your history with her, to send her into a blind rage. Lexa knew I was sick and injured, before she left, so it’s not far fetched for her to think I am dead, whether via torture or by illness. Send her those things, antagonize her, get her off her game. All I ask is that as many of my people be spared as possible, during the battle that ensues. Take them as prisoners if you must. We can work out terms later.”

“And what should stop me from simply sending her your head?” Nia asks - and Clarke feels relief. It’s so wrong, to feel relief at this kind of question, but she does. It means Nia is taking her bait. It means that maybe Clarke will finally be freed of the burden that is leading and caring for her people above all else. Her soul is tired but she cannot stop fighting while she is still breathing. To die knowing she did all she could to save her people, to give what remains of the world a shot at peace...it would be blissful. 

Clarke shrugs, feigning boredom. “You may not like me, but your people still know me as Wanheda. I’m still the mountain slayer, and I still hold a lot of power with the general public. I think I’ve proven that I haven’t lied to you. Why could we not continue with your original plan? Would you not be stronger with me beside you and Ontari? I’ve offered you a way to win this war with as few casualties as possible and still have 2 of the most powerful people alive willingly working with you to ensure you remain in power when the dust settles.”

Nia is pensively silent for long enough that Clarke starts to think that maybe she is seeing right through her. “I can see the merit in your plan, Wanheda,” and with the use of that name alone, Clarke knows she has won - but can she call it that? - “and if it works, I just may let you live to see what life is like with a true, powerful leader in command.” She turns to one of the perpetually silent assistant fisas in the corner of the tent. “Fetch me that which has been removed from Wanheda,” she snaps, barely bothering to look at the young man. Then she wheels on Ingrid. “You’ve done well, Ingrid. Wanheda may have her normal rations once more.” 

The Ice Queen snags a pair of rusty scissors from the tray of medical equipment and leans towards Clarke, letting the cold metal press unnecessarily roughly into the side of Clarke’s neck before she snips off several inches of matted, bloody and dirty hair that hangs out from underneath her bandages. 

And then she leaves, and Clarke’s shoulders immediately slump as she leans back against the wall. She does her best to steady her breathing because all she desperately wants to do is hyperventilate, freak out, but she can’t. She thinks of all the people who are going to die, if her plan works - innocent Azgeda, if there is such a thing - children, elderly, pregnant women. All will be lost. 

The ghost of a wistful smile touches the corner of her lips but it never quite comes to be. Once a mass murderer, always a mass murderer, isn’t that what they say? It’s what they will say, in the future, when they talk about Wanheda - when they talk about Clarke Griffin. 

  
  


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The worst part is the waiting and not knowing. Even with the fastest riders, a journey from the Ice Nation to the Mountain takes a long time. Clarke doesn’t know exactly how long, but she guesses at least 3 days. It has been 2. 

Ingrid assures Clarke that she is healing well, and she is now able to keep down ¾ of a bowl of soup and several cups of water during meal times. She is healing, and getting stronger, and nobody knows that it doesn’t matter except for Clarke. If everything goes according to her plan, she’ll be dead long before she ever has to worry about learning how to walk with only one good leg or the fact that she’ll never be able to pull her hair back out of her face without people gawking at the hideous lesions on the side of her face that were once her ears. 

Nia doesn’t visit again and Clarke isn’t sure if that’s a good or a bad sign. She wakes up on the morning of the third day since she had her talk with Nia; since she gave Nia a plan that will unwittingly result in her and all of her people being reduced to a crater of dust and bones where there once was an entire village of people. 

Clarke thinks. 

_ Today could be the day _ .

_ This could be my last time having to eat this horrible, stupid porridge. _

_ I hope my mother knows I love her.  _

_ I hope Bellamy knows I’m sorry.  _

_ I hope Lexa knows that I forgive her. That I understand why she did what she did.  _

The day goes on just as any other. Clarke watches the shadow of the sun flitting across the canvas roof of the tent until it disappears altogether as it sets. 

There’s only a second of warning before the missile strikes. It’s just an out of place whistling sound in the air and the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing up. It’s Ingrid locking eyes with her in the dim tent, confused. Alarmed.

And then it’s nothing. 

Blissful, merciful nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have backed myself into a corner with this one as I’m not certain how well I’ll be able to write what I want to come next from Lexa’s perspective. So just a heads up that the next chapter may be from Clarke again...we will see. 
> 
> Sorry to those of you that wanted Clarkey to keep all her toesies. Whoops.


End file.
